Advice on Help documentation tool

I'm writing what some of us call a 'dictator' application using Excel for a UK Government body to be deployed in the Education Sector. The spreadsheet is a sort of ready reckoner for Performance Measurment. There are the usual corporate technical and political issues in the deployment of the spreadsheet but it is agreed so far that we need to write a fairly intuitive help file to go with the spreadheet and it has been decreed that RoboHelp isn't a viable option. Has anyone got any experience/knowledge of any other package that isn't too expensive, fairly easy to use, is easily integrated with Excel, and doesn't need the end user to have a user license for.

Regards

Paul

It would be easier to answer the question if you could say why RoboHelp was ruled out as an option. The only person who would need a license for this or any other HTML Help compiler is the person who will be compiling the help file. If it's a matter of cost, you can get the free HTML Help Workshop from Microsoft here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669985.aspx

Being free, however, it requires a lot more work and tends to be a lot less intuitive than the commercial help applications.

As far as integrating with Excel and being intuitive to the end user, an HTML Help file is an HTML Help file regardless of the software used to create it. The vast majority of Excel integration can be handled with a single API call that is described in some detail here:

http://www.help-info.de/en/Help_Info_HTMLHelp/hh_api.htm

How well this works depends a lot on how well structured the help file is. There are also some issues related to difficulties closing the help file cleanly if the user shuts down Excel with the help file open that have not been clearly documented anywhere I'm aware of.

Whether or not the help file is intuitive to the end user is a design problem that really just requires experience and good intuition. I've written quite a few help files and I still don't pretend to be more than just adequate at this aspect of the job.

Hi Paul,

See of the following article at Ken Puls site can give You addtional input.

Using Help in Your Applications

Personally I use RoboHelp but that's another story.

Rob,

RoboHelp has been ruled out because it's got a bit of bad feedback from elsewhere in the organisation I'm working with. It may be prejudice and misinformation but I don't want to ruffle any feathers.

Thanks for the other links.

Regards

Paul

Dennis,

Thanks for the link. It looks interesting, I'll have a more detailed look in the morning.

Regards

Paul