MS Help Viewer Category Properties

The MS Help Viewer category properties control the features of MS Help Viewer (MSHC) files.

  Tip

Due to the requirement that MS Help Viewer files be installed before you can view them which can be time consuming, it is recommended that you generate one of the other help formats such as Help 1 or website while developing and proofreading your help file.

Help Viewer 1.0 catalog product ID (CatalogProductId)

This property is used to specify the MS Help Viewer 1.0 catalog product ID to use for the installation script. If not set, it defaults to "VS" to use the standard Visual Studio catalog.

  Note

This should typically be left set to the default value.

Help Viewer 1.0 catalog version (CatalogProductVersion)

This property is used to specify the MS Help Viewer 1.0 catalog version number to use for the installation script. If not set, it defaults to "100" to use the standard Visual Studio catalog version.

  Note

This should typically be left set to the default value.

Help Viewer 2.x content catalog name (CatalogName)

This property is used to specify a non-standard MS Help Viewer 2.x content catalog name to use for the installation script. If not set, it defaults to the default catalog based on the related version of Visual Studio, VisualStudio12 for Visual Studio 2013 for example.

  Note

Typically, this property will be left blank to install the content into the same catalog as the Visual Studio help content.

Vendor name (VendorName)

This property is used to set the vendor name that appears in the help content setup file. If not set, a default value of "Vendor Name" will be used.

Product title (ProductTitle)

This property is used to set the product title that appears in the help content setup file. If not set, the Help Title property value will be used.

Starting TOC sort order (TocOrder)

This property is used in conjunction with the TOC Parent Id property to set the placement and ordering of your help topics amongst existing topics in the parent location. If left set to -1, the help file builder will start ordering your topics at zero.

TOC parent topic ID (TocParentId)

This property allows you to define the location of your help file's content within the entire collection of help viewer content. If left set to -1, your help content will appear in the top level of the table of contents. If you want to parent your content at a different location, specify the value of the parent topic's Microsoft.Help.Id metadata item. You can find the value by going to the parent topic in the help viewer, viewing the source for the page, and finding the Microsoft.Help.Id metadata item.

  Note

See the Content Placement Options topic for more information on content placement and parenting help file viewer output.

TOC parent topic version (TocParentVersion)

This property is used to specify the version of the parent topic identified in the TOC Parent Id property. You can find the value by going to the parent topic in the help viewer, viewing the source for the page, and finding the Microsoft.Help.TopicVersion metadata item.

Topic version for this file (TopicVersion)

This property is used to specify the version value that should be applied to all topics in your help file.

Search results display version (SearchResultsDisplayVersion)

This property is used to set the display version shown below entries in the search results pane in the help viewer application. If left blank, the default, a display version will not be shown for topics in the search results pane. If set, this typically refers to the SDK name and version or the module in which the member resides to help differentiate it from other entries with the same title in the search results.

MS Help Viewer SDK link type (MSHelpViewerSdkLinkType)

This property is used to define the type of links used to reference other help topics referring to framework (SDK) help topics. It can be set to None which renders non-clickable links, Id which renders MS Help Viewer style ms-xhelp style links, or MSDN (the default) which renders links to the online help content for the topic. When set to MSDN, the Sdk Link Target property is used to define where the external links will open in the browser.

See Also