Getting Help

You can get help that is specific to many of the tasks you are performing, or you can open complete Help on all areas of IBM® Lotus Notes®.

About this task

You can view IBM Lotus Notes help in the following ways:

Dynamic Help pane - Also called context-sensitive Help, the help that displays in the Dynamic help pane is specific to the task you're performing
Help Contents window - View complete Help on all areas of the Lotus Notes product you're using.

Depending on how you are viewing help, you can customize your help experience. For example, in the Dynamic Help pane, you can define other search engines and add Web searches to your search scope. In the Help Contents window, you can bookmark favorite topics. You can refine your search scope in both Help interfaces.

Performing a simple Help search

You can search Help from either the Dynamic Help pane or the Help Contents window. Specify a term to search on, such as "schedule a meeting" and then click Go. (If you are searching from Dynamic Help, click the Search link at the bottom of the Help pane first.)

The Dynamic Help pane

Dynamic (context-sensitive) help is available in most areas of Lotus Notes including dialog boxes and properties boxes. To see it, press F1, choose Help > Dynamic Help, or click the question mark on any dialog box or properties box.

Refining your search

Use these steps to refine your search so that you search only specified topics.

Procedure

Click search.
Click search scope, and then click Advanced Settings.
Click Local Help, and the select Search only the following topics.
In the Working set content tree, select the Help topics you want to search.
Optional: Depending on your organization, you may not have access to all Lotus Notes capabilities. However, you can still see help topics relating to those features, by clicking Include results about disabled capabilities.

Results

Extending the search scope

You can broaden your search scope to include an information center or Web searches. If your organization has an internal Web site with customized help for Lotus Notes applications, you can include that as a search scope.

Click Search, and then click Search Scope to see a list of search engines. (Depending on how your Lotus Notes account is set up, you may not see any search engines listed.)
To add a new scope, Advanced Settings, and then click New.
Select a type of search engine from the list, and then click Finish (by default Local Help is already on your list):
- Info Center - Specify the URL for the info center you wish to add, and then apply your changes. The next time you search Help, you will be able to search from this new scope.
- Web Search - Open a browser, enter a search string, such as "replication." When results are displayed, copy the entire contents of the URL field into the URL template space in the Search Scope dialog box. Substitute the words you entered as your search string (replication in this case) with the string {expression}. The next time you search Help, you will be able to search from this new scope.

Viewing bookmarked topics

Although you cannot bookmark a topic in the Dynamic Help pane (you must create bookmarks from the Help Contents window), you can view topics you have bookmarked. To see a list of bookmarked topics, click Bookmarks:

The Help Contents window

To see all the Help available, choose Help > Help Contents from the main menu. When you do, Help opens in its own window. If you are in Dynamic Help and you want to see a full list of topics, click the All Topics link to display all topics in the Dynamic Help pane.

Refining the search results

To refine your search to search only specified topics.

Click search scope, and then Select Search only the following topics.
Click New, provide a List name for your refined search. Required, you will not be able to save this list without filling in this field.
In the Topics to search tree, select the Help topics you want to search.

Note: When you refine the scope this way, the newly defined scope becomes the default scope. To return to a search scope of all topics or another scope, click the Search scope link and choose from the list of defined scopes.

Bookmarking a topic

In the Help Contents window, you can bookmark topics that you want to return to frequently.

Open the topic you want to bookmark.
Click the Bookmark Document icon .

Viewing bookmarked topics

When you bookmark a topic, the bookmark does not display in the list of topics. To see a list of bookmarked topics, click the Bookmarks button:

Locating a topic in the table of contents

If you have followed links to a topic of interest and would like to see where this topic is located in the table of contents, click the Show in Table of Contents icon .