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Chapter 3: Finding Information

Apart from this Getting Started book, all the documentation is online only. You get to it from the Windows Start menu, or from Net Express's Help menu. This Getting Started book is both online and in printed book form.

Much of the documentation is in the form of Windows help. The rest is in the form of online books written as Web pages. You get to these from the Windows Start menu or from the Net Express help - when you click a book's button in the help, the book is displayed in your Web browser.

When you're looking for information, we recommend trying the different kinds of documentation in the following order:

  1. See if there's a tooltip.

    If you want information about a field or control, try leaving the mouse pointer on it for a moment. A brief description of its purpose may be displayed, either beside it or at the bottom of the Net Express window.

  2. Try context help.

    If you want information about a menu item or control, click the Context Help button on the toolbar, then click the menu item or control.

  3. Look in the help, using the help index.

    If Net Express is running, click Help Topics on the Help menu. Otherwise, from the Start menu, click Programs, then MERANT Net Express, then Help. Then click the Index tab and enter a relevant word. The index will automatically position at the entry, if one exists. Alternatively, scroll through the index to find what you want.

    In some cases the help index takes you to an online book via a help topic. If this happens, click Index in the Table of Contents of the online book, click the first letter of the phrase you're looking for, then scroll the index to find the phrase.

  4. Look in the online books, using the Master Index.

    From the Start menu, click Programs, then MERANT Net Express, then Bookshelf. Then select Master Index. Then, in the left-hand pane, click Master Index. Click the first letter of the word you want at the top of the right-hand pane, then scroll through the index to find the word.

  5. Look in the help using Find.

    Return to Help Topics, click the Find tab, and enter the word you're looking for. If this is the first time you've used Find since installing, the system will take a little while to create the dictionary.

    There is no equivalent to Find for the online books.

  6. If you still haven't found the information you want, repeat Steps 3 through 5 using some other relevant word.

You will find it useful to select the Contents tab in Help Topics and spend a few minutes looking through the Contents to see what the help covers. Similarly, select each book in turn from the Bookshelf and look through their contents to see what they cover.

Here are some further tips:


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