Basic Computer Concepts

Unit 3: Office 97 Application Suite

Lesson 1: Common Office Functions

How do you get help from the Help menu?

The Office Assistant is new for Office 97, but you can still get help the old fashion way–select Contents and Index from the Help menu. This will bring up the familiar Windows Contents, Index, Find tabbed dialog box. The following animation shows how to use the Index tab to search for information about the formatting style "bold."

Contents

Click Contents to view the table of contents for the help files. This is most useful if you are looking for general information about a topic. The information here is just like what you would find in the contents section of a book.

Index

Click Index to search an alphabetical index of specific topics. This is most useful if you are looking for specific information and you know a keyword that is likely to appear in the title of the help topic. The information here is just like what you would find in the index at the back of a book.

Find

Click Find to search the contents of the help topics. This is most useful if you know a few keywords, but you can't find sufficient help using the index. There is no book analog for the capabilities provided by the Find feature. (Note: The first time you choose Find a database is created. This can take several minutes to complete.)