This assumes that you are working on a project that is not yet stored in the VCS database. Always check with your system administrator before doing this to make sure that the project is not already in the VCS. If it is you need to follow the instructions further below for downloading a project from a VCS to a local copy.

1.Open the Help & Manual project you want to connect to your VCS. Then select Version Control > Connect local project to VCS in the File menu.

If the current project is a single-file HMXZ project select Version Control > Save as VCS Project. This will save the project as uncompressed XML (choose an empty folder) and then connect it to your VCS system. All the next steps are the same.

2.Select your version control system from the top drop-down list. If no system is displayed here it means your VCS is not installed or registered correctly on your system, or that no VCS database has been set up.

If you want you can use Check Version Control System to check the link to the DLL that links you to the VCS. Then click on Next.

3.The next dialog connects you directly to your VCS database, where you can create a new project for your Help & Manual project. In addition to the current directory of your project this dialog shows the last database you accessed and the associated user name – these will change in the next step if you link to a different database as a different user.

Click on Open or Create a VCS Project to select the project from your database. It's a good idea to select Store username in project to keep your username for your database in your stored Help & Manual project.

4.Clicking on Open or Create a VCS Project will open the access dialog for your VCS. The screenshot below shows the dialog for Visual SourceSafe 2005, your dialog may look a little different.

Clicking on OK opens the database navigation dialog of your version control system. Follow the instructions displayed there to create a new project in your VCS database. You may need to consult your VCS system documentation for instructions.

5.Once you have created the new project in your VCS database you will be returned to the Help & Manual dialog and the link data for your project will be displayed:

Then just click on OK to confirm – you will be returned to your Help & Manual project, which is now linked to your VCS database. This is indicated by the lock icon in the project name in the Project Explorer:

You can then start editing normally. By default all the check-in and check-out operations for your VCS system are handled automatically. See Auto & manual check-in/check-out for more information on this subject.

Multi-user editing is performed in almost the same way as for any other multi-user editing project. The only differences are that the file locks for topic access are handled by the VCS, which is transparent to the user, and you must also check out the TOC for editing in manual check-out mode. As far as you are concerned everything will behave in exactly the same way as any other multi-user editing project. See the chapter on Multi-User Editing for instructions on working in multi-user mode.

If a project is already stored in your VCS database you must "download" a linked copy of it from the database and store it locally before you start working on it. This is done with the Load VCS Project to Local System function.

1.Locate or create the empty folder in which you are going to save your project. There should not be any other files in this folder.

2.Select Version Control > Load VCS Project to Local System in the File menu. This displays the following dialog:

3.Click on in the Output File: field and select the empty folder where you want to store your local copy of the project. Then click on Next to display this dialog:

Select your version control system from the top drop-down list. If no system is displayed here it means your VCS is not installed or registered correctly on your system, or that no VCS database has been set up.

If you want you can use Check Version Control System to check the link to the DLL that links you to the VCS. Then click on Next.

4.The next dialog connects you directly to your VCS database. In addition to the current directory of your project this dialog shows the last database you accessed and the associated user name – these will change in the next step if you link to a different database as a different user. Click on Open a VCS Project to select a project from your VCS database.

Click on Open a VCS Project to select a project from your VCS database. It's a good idea to select Store username in project to keep the username for your database in your Help & Manual project.

5.Clicking on Open a VCS Project will open the access dialog for your VCS. The screenshot below shows the dialog for Visual SourceSafe 2005, your dialog may look a little different.

Clicking on OK opens the database navigation dialog of your version control system. Follow the instructions displayed there for selecting the project from your VCS database. You may need to consult your VCS system documentation.

6.Once you have selected the project in your VCS database you will be returned to the Help & Manual dialog and the and the link data for your project will be displayed:

Then just click on OK to confirm – the local copy of the database project will be created automatically and the project will be opened in Help & Manual. The project is now linked to your VCS database. This is indicated by the lock icon in the project name in the Project Explorer:

You can then start editing normally. By default all the check-in and check-out operations for your VCS are handled automatically. See Auto & manual check-in/check-out for more information on this subject.

Multi-user editing is performed in exactly the same way as for any other multi-user editing project – the only difference is that the file locks for topic access are handled by the VCS, which is transparent to the user. See the chapter on Multi-User Editing for instructions on working in multi-user mode.

Editing a project that is linked to a VCS database is basically exactly the same as editing a normal project. By default your topics will be checked in and out of the VCS database automatically by Help & Manual. See Auto & manual check-out for details on the manual options.

As soon as you start editing a topic it is automatically checked out of the VCS database and locked for all other users. Topics that are checked out are identified with additional icons in the Project Explorer – you will see green check icons for topics that you have checked out and red check icons for topics checked out by other users.

In multi-user editing mode everything works almost exactly as it does when multiple users are editing a project that is not linked to a VCS database. See Multi-User Editing for more details. The only difference is that you also need to check out the TOC to make editing changes in it (new topic, move topic, delete topic, edit topic caption) when you are using manual check-out. See Auto & manual check-out for details on this.

When you save your project your topic files are automatically checked back into the VCS database and unlocked for other users to access – the check icons will then be cleared from the topics in the Project Explorer. Here too, you don't have to do anything yourself.

You can only link uncompressed XML projects (.hmxp project file) to a VCS database. If your project is stored in the compressed, single-file HMXZ format you must first convert it to uncompressed XML. There are two ways to do this:

•Use Save As... in the File menu to manually save your project to uncompressed XML, then use Connect local project to VCS (see above) to connect it to your VCS database.

•Alternatively, you can use Version Control > Save as VCS Project in the File menu to save a new copy of your project in uncompressed XML and then connect the copy to the VCS database in one process. Apart from the first step (save to uncompressed XML) the procedure is exactly the same as for Connect local project to VCS (see above).