Getting Help

There are two main ways of getting help in Windows 95. You can use pop up help, or you can go to the Help Topics dialog box.

 

Pop Up Help

This is the help you get by using the ? button or the What's This menu option. We will use My Computer to see how pop up help works.

• Double click on My Computer to open the icon.
• Select View/Options. Click on the File Types tab.
  
• Click on the ? button in the top right hand corner of the dialog box that appears.
• Your mouse pointer will now have a question mark next to it. Click on the writing Registered file types.
• A yellow box will appear explaining what this option is about. This is pop up help.
  
• Click right in the yellow box. A shortcut menu will appear. You can select Print Topic from this menu to print out pop up help.
• Click in the yellow box to close it and the shortcut menu.
• You can also access pop up help from a shortcut menu. Click right on the words Registered file types. A shortcut menu will appear.
• Click on the What's This? option. The pop up help box will appear.
• Click in the yellow box to close pop up help.

 

The Help Topics Dialog Box.

• Select Start/Help to bring up the Help Topics dialog box. You can also access this from any Help menu in a window.

The dialog box has three parts - the Contents tab, the Index and the Find tab.

 

The Contents Tab

• Click on the Contents tab. You will see a series of books and pages with ? on them.
• Any page (has ? on it) can be looked at. You keep opening books until you find the relevant pages to display.
• Click on the Introducing Windows 98 book to open it. Another list of books and pages will be displayed
• Click on the How To Use Help book to open it. Another list of books and pages will be displayed.
• Click on the page Print A Topic. The information will be displayed on the right hand side of the dialogue box.
  
• Click on the Options menu. To print out this help topic, select Print Topic. The Print dialog box appears and you proceed from here as usual.

 

The Index Tab

• Click on the Index tab. This is where you search for a specific topic, like an index in book.
  

• In the top field type in the words settings and press Enter. We are looking for help with customising our computer.
• In the second field a list of topics will appear. The word settings will be highlighted.
• Double click on the topic you want to look at. We will double click on mouse settings, changing.
• A further list of topics will appear. Double click on the most relevant one - we will look at Changing the appearance of your mouse pointer.
• The help window for this topic appears on your screen

You can choose whether to display the left hand side of the Windows Help window or not

• Click on the Hide button to close this part of the Help window.
• Click on the Show button (it appears instead of the Hide button) to show this part of the window.

 

The Search Tab

You use this tab to find all the help topics that contain a certain word.

• Click on the Search tab.
  

• In the first field, type the word you are looking for. We will look for wallpaper.
• Press ENTER key or List Topics button to bring up a list of topics related to wallpaper in the second field.
• Choose the topic you want to see from this field. Double click on the topic To change the background of your desktop to display it, or click on it once to select it and click on the Display button.
  
• To remove the highlighting from the help topic, select the Options menu and click on the Highlighting Off.
• Click on the Web Help button to see how to find help for Windows 98 on the Interner.
• Close the Windows Help