VS 2005+

Visual Studio Help Source

by Richard Carr, published at http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/VSHelpSource.aspx

Visual Studio provides information relating to the .NET framework classes and the associated programming languages using context-sensitive and menu-driven help. The information can be obtained from the local machine or downloaded from the Internet.

Help

Visual Studio's help system can provide information from many sources. For fast access to help or when not connected to the Internet, the information can be installed onto the local machine and accessed from a hard disk. To ensure that help provides most up-to-date information, it can also be downloaded from the Internet. When using web-based help, the information can be obtained from several providers including official Microsoft documentation and other community web sites.

When Visual Studio is first installed, you are presented with three options for the source of help information. Two options allow information to be gathered from both the local machine and the Internet, with priority given to either. A third option specifies that only local information will be used. You may change your preferred help source using Visual Studio's configuration options.

To change the help source, choose Options from the Tools menu. The Options dialog box will be displayed. Using the tree view at the left side of the dialog box, expand the Environment and Help items. Select "Online" to display the help source options. The main help source can be selected using the "When loading Help content" options. Beneath these settings are two lists where you can enable and disable individual help sources.