1.Select the File menu and click on New Project to display the New Project settings page:

Select Create an empty new help project.

2.Select the project save format and specify the project save location, the project filename, the project title and the language settings:

Save format:
The Basic version of the program can only save in Compressed ZIP Archive mode (single .hmxz project file). If you have the Professional or Server version you can deselect this option to save in uncompressed XML format (an .hmxp project file and separate XML files for all topics and settings, required for multi-user editing). You must save to an empty folder when you choose the uncompressed format.

 We recommend using the uncompressed HMXP format for your ongoing work. It supports multi-user authoring and version control systems and since every single topic is a separate, plain-text XML file it is less vulnerable to possible damage.

Enter a title for your help project and select your help project language and character set. If your help project is in English or any ordinary western European language leave these options set to English (United States) and ANSI_CHARSET. See International languages setup for details on settings for other languages. Then click on Next.

3.At the bottom of the New Project page you can see a small set of standard topics that you can now edit and add to. You can edit, delete and add topics if you want to. Don't worry about getting everything right now – you can change everything later very easily.

4.Click on Create on the right to create and open your new project. All the topics whose titles you entered in the previous step will automatically be created.

Your work is the most valuable thing on your computer. When setting up a project, always make sure that you will have backups of your work in the case of an emergency. Ideally, your backups should be on a different computer, or at the very least on an external drive. Then if something catastrophic happens to your machine, you will be able to recover your work from the backup.

Note that if you are ever unable to save your current work, for example when you lose a network connection, Help+Manual will automatically enable you to save a special rescue copy containing only those topics that have been edited since the last save.

In addition to this, your unsaved edits are also saved to an ongoing background backup. If you experience a Windows or other system crash so that Help+Manual itself is no longer available, you will be prompted to restore your unsaved changes from the backup the next time you open the project.

Check out Backups and Emergencies to learn about this and other backup options so that you are prepared to recover your valuable project work if something ever goes badly wrong on your computer.