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Home > Jan's CompLit 101 > Working with Windows > Windows Basics > Help > Vista, Win7, Win8
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Jan's Working with Windows:

   Help: Vista, Win7, Win8

Windows Vista has a new arrangement for Help that uses web pages, with icons for some categories. Help for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 is much plainer.

Help for an individual program may use a style more like previous versions of Windows, but some use an entirely different interface of their own design.

Examples of Help and Support pages:

Help: Vista's initial Help and Support window  Help - initial screen (Win7)

Icon: WinXPTo work with Help in WinXP, go to WinXP Help

Help Interface

Help windows show links and articles that are actually web pages. These pages are more colorful in Windows Vista than in Windows 7 or Windows 8 and 8.1, but the content and navigation are very similar.

Buttons: Back and Forward in Help (Vista) Buttons: Forward and Backward (Win8) Back and Forward: The arrows take you backwards and forwards through Help pages that you have visited recently. If the button is gray, there are no choices in that direction. Windows clears this list if you clear Internet Explorer's History list. There is no button or link in the Help interface to view this history and the pages do not show in Internet Explorer's History list either. Sad Smiley face

Help - initial screen (Win7)Help and Support (Vista)Button: Help Home (Vista) or Help Home: Opens the Home page for Help and Support where there are links to various categories and to more support options.

Button: Print Help (Vista) Button: Print (in Win8 Help)Print: Opens the Print dialog to print the currently displayed Help page.

Help - table of contents (Win7)Help - Table of Contents (Vista)Button: Browse Help (Vista) or Browse help: Opens the table of contents for Help. Each category is a link and opens a page of topics and articles.

Help - More support options (Win7)Help - Ask (Vista)Button: Ask (Vista) Ask: Opens a page with links to various resources for Help. All require an Internet connection.

Right Click Menu: Help (Win8)Button: Options in Help - list opened (Vista)Button: Options (Vista) or (Win8) Right Click Menu: Opens a list of options for Windows Help. You use the Find (on this page) feature to search the text of the open article.

Search Help only
Search Help: Type in keywords and click the magnifying glass or press the ENTER key to search. The results will only include Help articles, not any other documents on your computer. Windows' own Search feature on the Start menu/screen and at the top of windows that display files and folders does not search Help articles.

In the next pages you will learn to use Help features while learning some things about your computer.

Be aware that articles can vanish online without notice so what you see in Help may not match the illustrations.