Question

I want to hyperlink to a page within the Word 2007 Object Model Reference documentation, that ships with Word 2007. These are webpages that use the ms-help:// protocol that Firefox cannot understand.

So I wanted to specify the ms-help:// path of the help page as a command line argument to the viewer, CLVIEW.EXE.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\CLVIEW.EXE

Does anybody know the command line syntax for this?

Answer 1

CLVIEW.EXE doesn’t support command line parameters to launch to a certain page. It’s usually used to launch your own custom help file within the hosted Office application.

With Word 2007 there are some options available. They depend, let me repeat, they depend on whether your help is in online or offline mode.

1. If your intent is simply to get
   people to a specific Word help page
   and they have internet access, you can grab the URL from the help file
   in online mode. To do this,
   just right-click on the page you
   want the link, for example the
   Make the text bold page, to and click Properties. Then copy the URL
   (Address) which is:
   http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100215341033&ns=WINWORD&lcid=1033. This will work just fine in FF (if you were in Offline mode, this
   same link would have been:
   ms-help://MS.WINWORD.12.1033/WINWORD/content/HA10021534.htm.)

2. If you are first sending them to
   Word, you can run an macro that
   brings up this topic. You grab the
   “Topic ID” from right-clicking on
   the page Make the text bold page
   (which, in this case is
   “HA10021534”) and put that ID as the
   first parameter, like the below.
   NOTE: This should work in both
   online and offline mode.

   Sub DisplayHelpTopic()   
       Application.Assistance.ShowHelp "HA10021534", ""
   End Sub
   

3. For developer documentation with the
   solution for #2, if you are in
   offline mode, you need to set the
   scope to “DEV” (which will also work
   if you are in online mode). So for
   the subject Bibliography Object,
   the Topic ID is: HV10096617. If you
   are in online mode, you don’t need
   the “DEV” scope. Code:

   Sub DisplayHelpTopic()
      Application.Assistance.ShowHelp "HV10096617", "DEV"
   End Sub