If you’ve installed the Visual Studio 2010 help content locally on your computer, you may have noticed that there is no Index. Visual Studio 2010 Help is a browser-based Help system that enables you to navigate to the help content through the table of contents and search.
However, the Help Experience team recently released the Help Viewer Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010. You can find this Beta tool on MSDN Code Gallery (go to the Downloads tab to download it). This power tool can be used in-browser or standalone. The in-browser experience gives you an additional Search Results and Index tab in the left navigation pane. The standalone experience gives you three resizable tabs for navigating content: Contents, Search Results, and Index.
By default, you’ll be in the in-browser mode:
But you can switch to standalone mode by running the following command from an elevated command prompt (right-click the command prompt, and click “Run as Administrator”):
cd \program files\microsoft help viewer\v1.0
hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=true
Be sure to shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent after you run the command. To do this, right-click on the Help Library Agent icon in the taskbar, and click Exit.
Now when you open Visual Studio help, you’ll have the standalone Help Viewer that includes an Index tab:
You can switch back to in-browser mode by running the following command from an elevated command prompt:
hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=false
Be sure to shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent after the command is run.
Note: This power tool only works for the offline help; there is no Index available for online help.
To change these settings, go to the Help menu in Visual Studio 2010, and click Manage Help Settings. Click I want to use local help, and then click OK.
--Kathleen