Performs a search from the Office Help Viewer based on one or more keywords. Keywords can be a word or a phrase.

Syntax

expression.SearchHelp(Query, Scope)

expression An expression that returns a IAssistance object.

Parameters

Name Required/Optional Data Type Description
Query Required String Represents the search keyword or phrase.
Scope Optional String The namespace registered within the host application.

Remarks

The Assistance property returns an IAssistance object. The IAssistance object exposes methods that allow developers to display help topics in the Office Help Viewer or to display help topics that ship with Office in the Help window of the host application. Developers either pass specific Help IDs to the help system or pass specific search queries. Help IDs have to be explicitly added to the Help file in order for the Help ID to return the help topic.

The user can return more relevant help by narrowing the scope of the search, as long as the specified scope is applicable to the application. The following scopes are available within Microsoft Office applications. By default, the scope is set to the current application's namespace if a Null string ("") is passed as a parameter.

Applications Scope Parameter
All "" (NullString)
Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, Visio, and Word DEV

Example
In the first example, the search for "print a document" will be in the "Excel" namespace. In the second example, the search for "Application" will be in the "Excel Developer" namespace.

Visual Basic for Applications 
Sub SearchForHelpTopics1() Application.Assistance.SearchHelp "print a document", "" End Sub Sub SearchForHelpTopics2() Application.Assistance.SearchHelp "Application", "DEV" End Sub

See also: