Getting Help
Program features sometimes can seem a little obscure, and because the interface has been heavily redesigned in the Microsoft Office 2007 applications, you may get stuck from time to time when you’re trying out a feature that you don’t use every day. If you don’t have this book handy, it’s time to turn to another resource—the Help system for the application that you’re using.
Browsing Help contents
Whether you have an Internet connection or not, you can explore and browse the basic Help that installs with each of the Office applications. To open the application’s Help window, click the round Help (question mark) button at the right end of the Ribbon or press F1.
Note
OneNote and InfoPath don’t have a Help button, so in those applications, choose Help 
Microsoft Office Program Name Help to launch Help.
The Help window for the program appears and lists general help categories. Click a category to view available Help topics in that category (see Figure 1-16). In some cases, you may need to click a subcategory to display the topic you need. When you see the topic you need, you can click the Print button to print it. To move around to additional topics, use the Back and Forward buttons, as well as click additional links.
When you finish working in the Help window, click the window’s Close button to finish.
Searching Office online
You can search for help about a particular topic or question using the text box near the top of the Search window. If your system is already connected to the Internet, all you need to do is type the topic to search for into the text box and press Enter.
However, if you see Offline displayed in the right end of the status bar at the bottom of the Help window, you need to make sure that you’re connected to search the online Help. Follow these steps to search in that way:
1. | Click the drop-down arrow for the Search button and click a choice under Content from Office Online in the menu (Figure 1-17). The All Program Name choice searches all the online Help resources for that application, whereas any of the other choices under Content from Office Online target the Help search to a specific type of information. Figure 1-17. You can request that Office go back online for Help.
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2. | Type the search topic into the Search text box. |
3. | Press Enter. The list of matching Help topics appears. |
4. | Click the desired topic. The Help for the topic appears in the Help window. |
Note
Whether you browsed for Help while already connected to the Internet or you forced the Help window to search online, in some cases clicking a Help topic link will launch your system’s Web browser and display the Help and resources there, rather than in the Help window.
Tip
If you click the Search button drop-down arrow as noted in the preceding Step 1, you can click the Word Help choice under Content From This Computer to search only help installed on your system with Word. For simple questions, this method might display the right Help topic a bit more quickly.