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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

-Lesson 3 -
Getting Help

 
In this lesson, you learn how to use the Help feature in Exchange to get assistance as you perform tasks. You'll also learn how you can add your own notes to the information you find in the Help files.

Finding Help

This lesson discusses the Microsoft Exchange Server help features found in the Help Topics dialog box. To access this dialog box, choose Help, Microsoft Exchange Help Topics. The Help Topics dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 3.1. The Help Topics dialog box has three tabs available, so you can choose the way you search for help. The help features available on each of these tabs are discussed here.

Figure 3.1 The Help Topics dialog box.

No matter which tab you use, you end up with the same contents. Which tab you choose depends on how you want to search for help:

  • Use the Contents tab to get an overview of a topic. This is useful if you want to understand how a feature works.

  • Use the Index tab to find information about a broad topic by name, such as Outbox, Print, and so on.

  • Use the Find tab to see all the topics that contain a specific word. When you enter the word, a list of the index topics that contain that word appears.

The Contents Tab

The Contents tab lists all the Help topics, arranged alphabetically by topic. A book icon appears to the left of each topic. To open a book, follow these steps:

1. Click the book icon next to the category you want to open, and then choose Open. When the book opens, its chapters (the page icons with the question marks) are listed (see Figure 3.2). When the book is open, the Open button changes to a Close button, which you can click to close the book.

2.
To get to the contents, use one of these methods:

  • To display the Help page of the category you want, click the page icon and choose Display. The Help page displays a detailed explanation of the topic. (You'll learn more about the contents of the Help page later in this lesson.)

  • To print a chapter, select it and choose Print.

  • To print a book, select it and choose Print. A book can contain many chapters, so it might be faster and less wasteful to print only the specific chapters you really need.

Figure 3.2 You see a list of the chapters for each book, so you can pick the one you need.

3. Click the Contents button to return to the Contents tab.

4.
Click the Close button (the X in the upper-right corner of the dialog box) to close the Help facility.

The Index Tab

When you click the Index tab in the Help Topics dialog box, the Help window changes to display the Index, which looks like a book index (see Figure 3.3). Entries are listed alphabetically, with subtopics indented below the major topics. All the major topics for which there are pages in the Help books are included.

To find a Help topic using the Index tab, follow these steps:

1. In the Type the First Few Letters of the Word You're Looking For text box, type the first letters or words of the Help topic you're looking for. As you type, the index list jumps to the first list entry that matches the characters you're typing and highlights that topic.

2. (Optional) Instead of typing the topic in the text box, scroll through the Index listings, either to get an idea of the available topics or to find a specific topic.

Figure 3.3 The Help Index tab.

3. When you get to the Index section you want, select the topic and choose Display to see the information (or click Print to print it).

The Find Tab

The Find tab is useful for locating Help entries when you're not sure of their Index titles. You can type a word and see all the topics that contain that word in their contents.

The first time you use the Find tab, you must create a database of words and Help files that Find uses to locate the Help topics you want. Don't worry, Exchange provides a Find Setup Wizard to help you through the process.

To create the Find database and use the Find feature, follow these steps:

1. Click the Find tab in the Help Topics dialog box. The Find Setup Wizard appears, as shown in Figure 3.4.

2.
Choose the database configuration (described next) by clicking the option button next to the configuration you want. Then click Next.

Figure 3.4 The Find Setup Wizard.

3. After making your selection, follow the Wizard's easy instructions to complete the creation of the database for the Find tab.

When you run the Find Setup Wizard, you have three choices for configuring the database:

  • Minimize Database Size Use this option to create only a database, with no additional features except for the ability to search for words.

  • Maximize Search Capabilities Use this option to create a database that has added features that enable you to search for a topic and then move to other similar topics without entering a new word to search for. This database is much larger and takes longer to load when you want to use the Find tab, so don't choose this option unless you have found that working with the Minimize Database Size choice isn't providing the services you need.

  • Customize Search Capabilities Use this option to make advanced decisions about how to establish the database, such as which Help files to use, whether to include topics that are not part of an Index section (some definitions are not indexed), and whether to enable the feature with which you can search for phrases instead of words and the feature that lets you mark a section and then search for similar sections even if those similar sections don't contain the word you typed. This database is large and is much slower to use; if you don't need these capabilities, don't select this choice.

Choosing a Database Option Don't worry about making the wrong choice. You can re-establish this database with different choices by clicking the Rebuild button on the Find tab. The Find Setup Wizard then walks you through the process again.

After you create the Find database, you can use the Find feature by following these steps:

1. In the Help Topics dialog box, click the Find tab to display it (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5 The Find tab.

2. In the Type the Word(s) You Want to Find text box, type the words or phrase in which you are interested. As you type, matching characters appear in the next list.

3.
In the Select Some Matching Words to Narrow Your Search box, choose one or more words that most closely match the topic for which you are looking.

4.
Choose a topic from the Click a Topic, Then Click Display box. Click Display, and the Help page for that topic appears. (You'll learn more about the contents of the Help page next.)

5.
(Optional) Click Print to print the contents of the Help topic so you can have a hard copy reference.


You Can Change the Way Find Works To modify how the Find feature searches for a word or phrase, choose Options. The Find Options dialog box appears, and you can change the way the Find feature functions. The choices are self-explanatory.

Understanding the Contents of a Help Page

When you use one of the methods described earlier in this lesson to choose the specific Help topic you want, a Help topic page appears. Most Help pages have more than helpful text; there are additional features and functions with which you can get even more help (see Figure 3.6).

The following sections describe the elements of the Help page shown in Figure 3.6.

Help Page Menu Bar

You can use the options on the menu bar to perform tasks or access features. All the choices on all the menu items are not described here (although you may want to do that when you have some time to explore your system). Here are some of the most useful commands:

  • Annotate You can use the Annotate command to add your own notes or comments to the displayed Help topic. Choose Edit, Annotate, and the Annotate dialog box appears. Type your notes in the Current Annotation text box, and then click Save to close the dialog box and return to the Help page. When you add an annotation to a Help page, a paper clip icon appears to the left of the first sentence of the contents. The next time you display this Help page, you can click the paper clip to see your note.

  • Bookmarks Bookmarks are used to mark those pages you think you might want to return to frequently. The first time you open the Bookmark menu, it contains only one choice: Define. Just click OK to create the bookmark. When you create a bookmark for a page, it is added to the Bookmark menu. To find a favorite Help page, choose Bookmark and click the bookmark of the page you want. You're taken to that Help page immediately.

Figure 3.6 A typical Help page.


The Help Topic Toolbar

The toolbar buttons on the Help page enable you to perform the following functions:

  • Contents returns you to the Contents tab of the Help system.

  • Index returns you to the Index tab of the Help system.

  • Back moves you back to the previous Help topic page. (The Back button is grayed out and inaccessible if you are on the first page that appeared after you selected a topic.)

  • Print prints the currently displayed topic.

For some reason, there is no toolbar button for returning to the Find tab of the Help system. I find the easiest way to get there from here is to click Index and then click the Find tab.

Overview

Some topic pages have an Overview button below the topic title. You can click it at any time to see an overview of the general topic that the current page is a part of.

See Also

Click the See Also button to see other topics that include a reference to or additional information about the current topic.

Linked Help Text

You can click any text that is underlined (and appears in a different color) to see its definition. Text underlined with dashes is linked to definitions, and text underlined with a solid line is linked to other topics.

Finding Help in Exchange’s Dialog Boxes

Up to now, this lesson has covered the main Help system. However, it's important to note that within the features of Microsoft Exchange Client, most of the dialog boxes and windows you use also have their own Help feature.

If a dialog box has a Help button, you can click it to see specific help about the options on that dialog box.

If any dialog box has a question mark in the upper-right corner, it means that the "What's This?" feature is active. To learn about any part of the dialog box, click the question mark, and then click any title or text in the dialog box to see its definition. Or, you can right-click any title or text in the dialog box and click the small box that says What's This? to see the definition.

In this lesson, you learned how to find specific Help topics and how to take advantage of special features available on the Help pages in Exchange. In the next lesson, you'll learn about the Global Address List.

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