Help on Missing "Help"

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Art Kleiner - 20 Nov 2005 08:53 GMT

A comment in another thread (on batch removal of comments) reminded me:

The "help" menu has mysteriously disappeared from Microsoft Word.
It simply doesn't show up.

It's visible in other programs, including Powerpoint. But seems to be
missing from Word.

The only other place I have difficulty is in the Mac finder, where the
menu appears but the Help Viewer doesn't respond when I type in a
query.

I'm running Word 2004 version 11.2, and Mac OS X v 10.4.3.

Yours gratefully, ArtK

PS - Since I tend to think I shouldn't NEED help -- that every program
should be intuitively obvious -- I haven't bothered to investigate
this, but it's been missing for at least three or four months. It's
also been difficult to fix, because the feature I need to fix it - the
help feature - is precisely the one missing.

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JE McGimpsey - 20 Nov 2005 14:38 GMT

> PS - Since I tend to think I shouldn't NEED help -- that every program
> should be intuitively obvious -- I haven't bothered to investigate
> this, but it's been missing for at least three or four months. It's
> also been difficult to fix, because the feature I need to fix it - the
> help feature - is precisely the one missing.

It would be nice if every feature of an application was intuitively
obvious. Unfortunately, that pretty much limits the complexity of the
app to something like the Calculator. One could use Word that way, but
you'd miss 90% of the power of the application.

If you haven't intentionally modified your menus, choose
Tools/Customize/Customize Toolbars/Menus... Select the "Menu Bar" item
in the Toolbars pane (so that the name is highlighted, not just the
checkbox checked) and click Reset.

If you have customized your menus and you want to keep the
customizations, choose Tools/Customize/Customize Toolbars/Menus...,
select the Commands pane, in the Categories list, select "Built-in
Menus", then drag the Help item in the Commands list to the menu bar.

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Art Kleiner - 20 Nov 2005 14:47 GMT

That's it! It worked! Thank you.

I'm not sure I agree about the complexity issue. I think there is a
Platonic Ideal of perfect intuitive obviousness, even given the
disparate ways different people think. But it takes an ethic of
continuous improvement that may well be impossible. I grant you that
Microsoft Word goes pretty far in this direction, but precisely because
it does that well, we tend to expect perfection.

ArtK

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Mac Forum / Applications / Word / November 2005

Help on Missing "Help"