Using Community Help

Use Community Help to get answers to your questions and to increase your knowledge. Introduced with Adobe Creative Suite 4, Community Help pools a wide variety of content from Adobe and community experts around the world.

For a FAQ about Community Help, see http://community.adobe.com/help/profile/faq.html.

For a video overview of Community Help, see www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4117_xp.

What's included in Community Help

• Complete product Help on the web updated regularly by the Adobe documentation team, with live commenting moderated by experts

• Community content hand-picked by Adobe and industry experts, including videos, tutorials, tips and techniques, blogs, articles, and examples for designers and developers

• Other content on Adobe.com, including tech notes, downloads and updates, Adobe Developer Connection tutorials, and more

• A custom Google search engine that searches only Community Help content. Adobe experts work to ensure that the top search results include a mixture of content, including product Help

• A product portal page called the Help and Support page that gives you access to all the components of Community Help for a specific product

Using the Help and Support page

The Help and Support page is your portal to Community Help and is updated regularly. The page lets you access the product's Help on the web, search Community Help, browse hand-picked content, and troubleshoot problems. The page consists of the following elements:

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Get product Help

• Click the Help button in the upper-right corner of the page.

  

  Tip: If you use Help often, bookmark it.

  For more information, see Access product Help.

Search Community Help

• Enter search terms in the search box, make sure the Community Help option is selected, and then press Enter.

  

  Tip: You can also search Community Help from the product's Help on the web and, in some cases, directly from a search box in the application interface. See Searching Community Help.

Browse hand-picked content

• If you're new, check out the items in the Getting Started section.

• In the Top Picks section, explore Adobe and community content selected by Adobe and industry experts for its quality and usefulness, including videos, tutorials, tips and techniques, blogs, articles, and examples.

• In the sidebar, click the triangle icons to expand or collapse the groups of links.

Subscribe to the RSS feed

You can subscribe to an RSS feed and use your favorite RSS reader to keep up with updates to the Top Picks section. Google offers a free, browser-based RSS reader called Google Reader.

1. Copy the feed URL by right-clicking the Subscribe link at the upper-right side of the Top Picks section (see the image above), and then selecting Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer) or Copy Link Location (Firefox).

2. Paste the feed URL in the appropriate field in your RSS reader.

Troubleshoot problems

• Review the top tech notes in the Troubleshooting section, clicking any of the tabs to sort the list.

  

• Click the support links in the sidebar to get more information.

Searching Community Help

You can search Community Help from the product's Help and Support page, from the product's Help on the web, and, in some cases, directly from the application interface.

Search from the Help and Support page

• In the product's Help and Support page, enter search terms in the search box, make sure the Community Help option is selected, and then press Enter.

  

  For more information, see Using the Help and Support page.

Search from the Help on the web

• In the product's Help on the web, enter search terms in the search box, and press Enter.

  

  Tip: To search only the documentation produced by Adobe, select This Help System Only.

Search from the application interface

• In the application, enter search terms in the search box on the Application bar, and then press Enter. The Application bar runs across the top of the window and contains a workspace switcher and other controls.

  

  Note: Photoshop and a few other products don't have a search option in the application interface.

Refine search results

You can filter the results of any Community Help search so that the results page lists only documentation produced by Adobe, including Technical Support content.

• On the search results page, select the "Show Only Content from Adobe" option at the top of the results list.

  

Getting product Help

Complete product Help is available on the product Help and Support page. This content is updated regularly by the Adobe documentation team. A subset of Help is also installed with most products in case you're unable to connect to the Internet.

Access product Help

Choose the access option that best fits your needs.

Connected to the Internet

Access Help as follows if your computer is connected to the Internet most of the time.

• In your product, select Help > ProductName Help. If the product's Help and Support web page opens, click the Help button in the top-right corner of the page.

  

  Tip: If you use Help often, bookmark it. You can also set a preference so that web Help opens by default when you use the Help menu. See Change the Help menu behavior.

Not connected to the Internet

Access Help as follows if your computer is not connected to the Internet most of the time. Important: The installed Help consists of only about 70% of the content available on the web and is not updated.

• When you’re offline, select Help > ProductName Help in your product.

If you want the complete Help while working offline, take a moment to download the PDF version of Help. The PDF contains the same up-to-date Help available on the web, though it doesn't have user comments and other web features. In production environments where many people are not connected to the Internet, a system administrator can download the documentation and make it available on the company intranet.

1. Temporarily reconnect to the Internet.

2. In the product Help, click the PDF link on the title bar to download the latest PDF.

   

   Tip: From time to time, reconnect and check for an updated PDF. Updated PDFs have a date stamp at the bottom of the title page.

Change the Help menu behavior

If you're connected to the Internet and you select Help > ProductName Help (or press F1), the Help and Support page opens by default for most products. You can set a preference so that the product's web Help opens by default instead.

1. Go to the web Help home page by clicking the link on the Help and Support page. See Access product Help.
2. On the home page, select Help On The Web.

   

The preference changes the Help menu behavior for all Adobe products installed on your computer.

Searching Help on the web

To search the Help on the web:

• Enter search terms in the search box, make sure This Help System Only is selected, and press Enter.

  

To search product Help from the Help and Support page:

1. Enter search terms in the search box, make sure the Community Help option is selected, and then press Enter.

2. After the search results appear, click the "Show Only Content from Adobe" check box at the top of the results list to filter out all the other results. The results will still include Technical Support content.