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September 17, 1999

With Microsoft Office 2000, you can provide users with extended Help, such as custom error messages. These features work easily in U.S. English, but what if you use them with another language? Or what if you have a mixed-language environment, with users from around the world working with the same Help files?

You can ensure that everyone in your organization can take advantage of your extended Help, no matter what language they are using.

Direct all users to the same page

To implement custom error messages, you create an Active Server Pages (ASP) file that directs users to a particular Web page based on the error number ID, no matter which language is selected for the user interface.

For example, if your office environment includes both U.S. English and German versions of Office 2000, both U.S. English and German users are directed to the same ASP page, and then to the same Web pages for extended Help.

To activate custom error messages, you modify a setting in the following Windows registry subkey to point to your ASP page:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\General

In the General subkey, change the value of the CustomizableAlertBaseURL entry to the URL for your ASP page.

Tip   You can also use a system policy to change the base URL for custom error messages. In the System Policy Editor, set the Microsoft Office 2000\Customizable error messages\Base URL system policy to point to your ASP page.

Some Office 2000 error messages are extended by default. These messages connect users to the Office Update Web site for information about the problem. You can redirect any of these extended error messages to point to a site on your intranet, too.

Direct users to language-specific pages

You can also direct users to different Web pages for extended Help in their own language. In this case, you use a query to identify the language so that the ASP page can redirect based on both the error message ID and the Help language.

To query the Help language, you modify the CustomizableAlertBaseURL value entry to include the %HelpLang% query. The following example shows a URL with the query appended:

http://mysite/alerts.asp?HelpLCID=%HelpLang%&

With the query included in the path, you can modify your ASP page to redirect U.S. English users to an English version of the Web page, and German users to a German version of the Web page.

Related links

For more information about customizing error messages, see Customizing Built-in Error Messages in the Office 2000 Resource Kit.