The System.Windows.Forms.Help class encapsulates the HTML Help 1.0 engine and lets you display the index, the search page, or a specific topic in an HTML file in HTML Help format or a compiled help file (.chm) authored with the HTML Help Workshop or some third party tool.

This class exposes two shared methods, and you can’t create an instance of this class. The ShowHelpIndex method displays the index of the specified help file, as in:

' The first argument is a Control object that works as the ' parent for the help dialog box.Help.ShowHelpIndex(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm")

(You can also use a URL that uses forward slashes as separators.) The other method, ShowHelp, is overloaded to provide access to different portions of the help document:

' Display the contents of the help file.Help.ShowHelp(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm")' Display the index page of the help file.Help.ShowHelp(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm", HelpNavigator.Index)' Display the search page of the help file.Help.ShowHelp(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm", HelpNavigator.Find)' Display the help page for a specific keyword.Help.ShowHelp(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm", "mykeyword")' Display the help page for the specific topic #123.Help.ShowHelp(Me, "c:myhelpfile.chm", HelpNavigator.Topic, 123)

The Help class replaces the Help Common Dialog, which isn’t supported any longer.