Quick Start Tutorials > Editing topics

Entering and editing text in your topics in Help & Manual is very similar to working in a word processor. To edit a topic select the topic in the Table of Contents or Project Files section of the Project Explorer, then click inside the editing window to start editing.

The Write tab in the Ribbon provides direct access to all the tools you need while you are editing. The only group inside this section that may be unfamiliar to word processor users is the Insert group, which contains special tools used in help authoring projects.

•	You can type and enter text and copy and paste from other programs just as you would in a normal word processor.

•	Use the tools in the Font and Paragraph groups in the Write tab to format text. Select text to apply new formatting, select a formatting option (Bold, Italic etc.) and type to change formatting from the current cursor position.

•	The Font and Paragraph groups have additional dialog modes that you can display by clicking on the little icons in their bottom right corners.

•	Hover the mouse pointer over the tools in the Write tab of the Ribbon for descriptions.

•	You can save a lot of time and work by using styles. See the Using styles tutorial.

Live spell checking:

1.	Select Write > Spelling > Configure Spell Checker and select the dictionary for the language you want to use in the Main Dictionaries section at the bottom of the dialog. Select Download dictionaries to get additional dictionaries.

2.	Activate the Check spelling as you type option. Misspelled words will then be underlined in red as you type.

Manual spell checking:

•	Select the top half of the Spelling tool in the Project tab to check the current topic or text entry field or window. If text is selected only the selected text will be checked.

•	Select the bottom half of the tool for the spell-check menu.

Spell checking is supported almost everywhere in Help & Manual where you can enter text. Just right-click to display the context menu or click on the upper half of the Spelling tool in the Project tab to access.

•	You can copy and paste text just as you would in a normal word processor. This works within topics, between topics and between projects.

•	You can open multiple projects and copy and paste between them, or you can open Help & Manual a second time and copy and paste between the two windows.

•	You can copy and paste formatted text from and to other programs, including Office programs like MS Word and MS Excel.

Copying images from Word:

When you copy text with images from MS Word always right-click on the image afterwards and convert the image into an external file. Otherwise the image will be embedded in your topic file and will take up much too much space. If you have many embedded images you may experience slow editing performance.

•	You can split off individual chapters and topics into an individual Project Explorer window for easier editing. Just select the project, chapter or topic you want to edit and then select Explore > Split Explorer in Project > Manage Topics.

•	The split view is just another "access point" to your topics and chapters. Closing the new view window does not delete anything, it simply closes the new view window.

You can switch the editor display to show the styles definitions for screen output (electronic help files) and print output (PDF, RTF and printed manuals). You can also switch the editor's basic font sizes to emulate Windows' "large fonts" and "small fonts" settings to check how your help will look on users' systems with these settings.

Note that different styles will only be displayed if you have actually defined different style settings for screen and print output!

Display buttons in the status bar:

See Help and print styles for more information on using different style sets for different output formats.