Chapter 6. Getting Help

Fortunately, there are many sources for help in Windows 2000 Pro—in fact, so many that it’s easy to get confused. This brief chapter offers some help with Help.

Built-in Windows 2000 Help

When Microsoft refers to help, it’s generally referring to online help. (As you’ve noticed, Windows 2000 comes with very little in the way of printed instructions.) The following discussion starts with the simplest and most direct methods of getting online help and proceeds to more complicated ones.

Press F1

Whenever you’re confused or lost in Windows 2000 Pro, press the F1 key, which always stands for Help in Windows and Windows programs. Because the help is context sensitive, the sort of help you’ll get depends on where you are and what you’re doing. If you’re working in a program, the help will be for that program. If you’re using some aspect of Windows 2000 Pro, the help will be the operating system’s help.

Click the Right Mouse Button

Often you can find useful information if you right-click the dialog box, description, or menu that has you stymied. If a box labeled What’s This? pops up, click inside it for more information (see Figure 6-1).

If a box labeled What’s This? opens when you right-click something in a dialog box, click inside the box for additional information, as shown here by the inset. If you don’t get a What’s This? box, you may get a menu that provides hints as to the object’s function. In some dialog boxes, a question mark appears on the title bar. Click it and then click on the dialog box element that perplexes you; the same kind of identifying box may appear.
Figure 6-1. If a box labeled What’s This? opens when you right-click something in a dialog box, click inside the box for additional information, as shown here by the inset. If you don’t get a What’s This? box, you may get a menu that provides ...

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