Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 4

Over the last couple of weeks, we learned how to make sure we have the right program for our needs and how to use the quickstart guide to get us started. Last week, we spent a lot of time looking at the common menu and toolbar items found in most programs. And yesterday, we saw what to do with the menu items and toolbar buttons that we were not familiar with as well as noting the shortcut keystrokes for different tasks. Now, only one more area remains before we start trying to use the program.

Browsing the Help Files

Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the menu, let's check out the Help menu in more detail.

A couple of days ago, we looked at the help menu and saw that it had a Contents section and an Index section. Click on the Contents section to bring up the help screen. In most programs, you can quickly access this screen by pressing the F1 key in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard.

The window that comes up should look similar to the on the right. It may look different, depending on the program and operating system you are using, but that is not important. What is important is the information that it contains. Notice in this example, the Contents screen has two panels. The one on the left will have a list of topics. The window on the right will contain the "page" you are currently looking at. You may notice some buttons up at the top of the page. These buttons should be similar to the ones you would see when browsing a web page and are for navigating the help files.

The Table of Contents

The list of topics on the right hand side can be thought of like the the table of contents in a book. When you click on a topic, you "flip" to that page of the book on the right hand screen.

Some topics will contain other sections. These will be noted by either a book, as in our example, or with a + sign. Once these topics are clicked on and opened, the icon will change to an open book or a - sign. Other topics will be revealed. Some may contain still further sub-topics, again noted by the book or symbol. Others will have a page icon or no sign at all. These are actual content pages. clicking on these content pages will bring up the content for that page in the right hand panel.

As you look through these topics, look for things that interest you. You may have a question about a particular feature you saw when you were browsing the menu. See if you can find a help topic for it here. Click on a few topics just to get a feel for how this particular program deals with the help content.

One quick note about the information panel before we move on to the index. Scroll down to the bottom of the bottom of one of the topics. At the bottom, you will likely see some links. These are links to other help pages and are usually preceded by the header that says Related Topics. For example, in Open Office, the topic of Master Documents links to other pages about Indexes Covering Several Documents. This can be a big help in quickly finding information related to what you are trying to find.

Help Index

Another way to find information that you are looking for is to look at the Index. From within the program, you can access this directly from the Help menu. If you are already looking at the help screen, just click on the tab that says Index.

What you will see right away is that the index of the help files looks just like the index in the back of the book. And, like the contents section, clicking on a topic in the left panel will open up a page in the right panel.

Several topics in the index will be broken down into different categories. The sub categories will be indented slightly to show that they are related to the most immediate term above it that is flush to the left. This is exactly like the index of a book. And, just like in a book, topics are arranged alphabetically.

Some programs will pop up a dialog box when you click on a topic. In these programs, the topic you clicked on may have relevance to several different items, and the help section is trying to let you decide which one is the most relevant to what you are trying to find.

You will also find a search box at the top of the screen. This search box will allow you to quickly find topics. Just type in what you are looking for in the search box. Often, you will notice that the terms "jump" to the first spot that most closely matches what you have already typed in. This makes finding topics very easy.

Take a good look through the index to see if there are any topics you wish to see further information on. Perhaps you were interested in the Word Count feature in the tools tab, but didn't find a topic for it in the contents. Just typing in word count in the search box quickly brings this topic up for view in our example.

In most programs, these two screens are all you will really need to find the topic you are looking for. However, note that some help files include a search that will check the individual pages for a term. If the other two methods don't get you what you need, try this option.

By now, we have learned a lot about the program, really in a matter of minutes. Though it took several pages to get to this point, the truth is that the topics covered up to this point (outside of waiting for the install) can usually be completed in five to ten minutes. Tomorrow, we'll look at the last topic -- the most fun one of the five!