Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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─────What Is HELPMAKE?──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
     The Microsoft Help File Maintenance Utility (HELPMAKE) creates
     help databases used by many Microsoft applications to display
     online help.
 
     HELPMAKE operates in two ways:
 
        ■ Encoding: creating a help database from a source text file
 
        ■ Decoding: creating a source text file from a help database
 
          ┌────────────────────┐   HELPMAKE   ┌─────────────────────┐
          │  Help Source File  ├─── encode ──►│  Help Database File │
          │       (.SRC)       │◄── decode ───┤       (.HLP)        │
          └────────────────────┘              └───────────┬─────────┘
                                                          │
                                                          ▼
                                                Application Using Help
 
     HELPMAKE is required to create and modify help databases. These
     databases are read and displayed by common "help-engine" software
     built into Microsoft applications.
 
     You can use HELPMAKE to modify a help database supplied with a
     Microsoft application.
 
     See: ◄Modifying a Microsoft Help Database►
                                    -♦-