Support Groups

Here is a list of online support groups. The top items are those we highly recommend as good places to find answers to your questions. Groups marked with an * are those where we know MicrosoftHelpMVPs and Microsoft employees help out. MSHelpWiki is not a support group. Please ask any authoring questions in the appropriate Support Group.

• Support Groups
  • General
  • MS Help 2.x
  • Archives
  • Vendor Support Sites
  • Related Links

General

• HATT : Yahoo discussion group - around 5,000 members. Discuss all things related to online Help. Go to HATT_OT for off-topic chats on pavlova recipes and football.
• microsoft.public.helpauthoring : Microsoft Newsgroup for general Help authoring discussion. If you don't like News Readers, MS also provide a Web Interface.

MS Help 2.x

• MSHelp2 : Yahoo discussion group - around 600 members. Discuss all things MS Help 2.x related. See also MSHelp2 Home Page
• microsoft.public.vstudio.helpauthoring : Microsoft Newsgroup for Visual Studio-related Help authoring discussion. This includes MSHelp2 Support. If you don't like News Readers, MS also provide a Web Interface.
• MSDN Forums » Visual Studio » Developer Documentation and Help System

Archives

Maybe your question has already been asked, and answered!

• Google Groups: Google cache the MS HelpAuthoring and other News Groups daily. This is a great way to find stuff that has fallen off your current News Group view. Try it with the following examples:
  • Search for "Button+Toolbar" at microsoft.public.helpauthoring now!
  • Search for "API" at microsoft.public.vstudio.helpauthoring now!
• MS News Groups Search
• HATT: HATT (a Yahoo discussion group) contains over 3 years of help discussions you can search through.

Vendor Support Sites

• AuthorIT AuthorIT
• Deva Tools Deva Tools
• DocToHelp DocToHelp
• ForeHelp ForeHelp
• Help & Manual Help & Manual (independent user-managed forum)
• HelpServer HelpServer
• The Helpware Group FAR HTML & H2Reg? Products
• HyperText Studio HyperText Studio
• MadCap Software Flare Support
• RoboHelp RoboHelp (RoboHelp Office, RoboHelp Office Pro, RoboDemo, RoboPDF, and more)
• RoboHelp-Forum for german speaking users The german speaking forum for RoboHelp, RoboSource Control, Captivate, RoboDemo, RoboInfo, RoboPDF
• WebWorks Publisher WebWorks Publisher
• WebWorks Publisher WordHelp WebWorks Publisher WordHelp
• xdk-hdk users group XDK by Virtual Media - Republicorp. This is an independent group.

Other tools have their own support sites. If your tool isn't listed here, please check with your vendor.
Note to vendors: sites listed here provide "free" access (that is, not by invitation only). If you provide an open support community, please add it here.

Related Links

• MS Research Netscan: See statistics on all Microsoft Newsgroup usage.