Adobe InDesign CS2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

#8. Introducing the Adobe Help Center

If you have questions about any feature or process in InDesignand it's beyond the scope of this booklook no further than the Help menu. Choose InDesign Help from the Help menu to open the comprehensive Adobe Help Center (Figure 8). The Help Center actually provides more information than any printed documentation you receive from Adobe. It's also your best first move in terms of troubleshooting.

Depending on the speed of your computer, the Help Center may take a little time to load. Therefore, you may prefer to keep its window open but behind other windows. If the window size is over-whelmingfor example, if you want to see the page you're working on and the help at the same timeyou can shrink the window. Click the Compact View button in the upper-right corner to condense the window so it displays only the text of the current topic along with Previous Topic, Next Topic, and history buttons.

Taking a Tour

At the top of the Help Center, you can click a button to specify what you're looking for:

• Product Help displays help for all installed Adobe products; you can choose a product from the Help For menu.

• Export Support describes the technical support plans available from Adobe.

• More Resources provides links to online resources, including Support, Tips and Tutorials, Forms, and Training.

You'll be in the Product Help window most of the time, which provides a navigation area at left (Contents, Index, and Bookmarks) and displays the actual help text at right. The second row of buttons lets you navigate and print help topics; as with other buttons in InDesign, point at them with the mouse to display their Tool Tips.

Searching the Help

To locate information, you can scroll through the Contents list, double-clicking topics to display subtopics or text. This works well if you need a full overview of a topic, such as "Color." If you need a quick answer, however, try the Search field in the upper-right corner. Searching works well for finding out what a specific command does or how to complete a specific task. Here are a few tips for searching:

• To find out how to do something, use "to" in your search text. For example, type "To create a text path" rather than "creating text paths."

• Put quotation marks around specific phrases to locate them. For example, if you want to find out what the Save Workspace command does, enter "save workspace" with quotation marks. This produces two results, one of them called "To customize the workspace." Entering the same phrase without quotation marks produces about 50 results for you to wade through.

• If you've installed the entire Adobe Creative Suite, the help file often includes information about Adobe Bridge. If you're not using Adobe Bridge, it's safe to ignore this information and focus on information about InDesign only.