Getting Help

Any time you need help, press F1 to produce a context-sensitive help screen.

KEY TERM

Context-sensitive help An automated system that looks at what you're currently doing and provides assistance for that particular menu, button, or command.

OpenOffice.org is surprisingly accurate at displaying the help you need when you need it. For example, suppose you're selecting from the Tools menu and you want to know what the AutoCorrect command does. Simply select Tools and move your mouse to the AutoCorrect option. Without clicking to trigger that option, press F1 with the option still highlighted, and OpenOffice.org opens a help window that provides help on the AutoCorrect feature. Throughout most of OpenOffice.org's help screens, you'll find many hyperlinks that take you to other areas within the help system for more detailed assistance on topics related to the AutoCorrect menu option.

KEY TERM

Hyperlinks Text that's usually underlined in help screens (and web pages, too) that you can click to navigate to other areas, such as when you want to learn more about the topic mentioned in the help text.

OpenOffice.org's help screens provide context-sensitive help for whatever topic you request.

In addition to the traditional help screens, OpenOffice.org provides three more kinds of help tools, described next . You can display or hide any of these help elements from the Help menu of any OpenOffice.org program:

• Help Agent Displays a small window in the lower-right corner of your OpenOffice.org program when a task you're currently performing might be better done another way or when additional information about what you're doing may be of some assistance to you. If you click the Help Agent's window, the extra help appears in a window that you can read for more details.

  NOTE

  The Help Agent works a lot like Microsoft Office's animated Clippit assistant but is far less obtrusive and annoying!

  
  

• Tips Also called ToolTips in Windows terminology, these are names that pop up in hovering description boxes over toolbar buttons and other areas of your screen that tell you the name or purpose for a particular object.

• Extended Tips Display a description of almost any item on the screen (except for menus ) when you hover your mouse over these objects. To activate this feature, select What's This from the Help menu.

The Help Agent offers advice as you use OpenOffice.org programs.

Help Agent produces this help screen when you click the Help Agent window while formatting a text selection; this help provides an overview of character formatting.

The help that OpenOffice.org provides is always customizable on your part. For example, not only can you turn off the entire Help Agent, if you leave the Help Agent on but ignore its offered advice three times in a row in a particular situation, the Help Agent stops offering that advice. You can always reset the Help Agent and restart this advice again by clicking the Reset button inside the OpenOffice.org Option 's General dialog box.

TIP

To turn Help Agent on or off, choose Tools, Options from the menu bar, click the General subcategory under OpenOffice.org , and then enable or disable the Help Agent check box