Office 97 Help feature doesn't work under Wine 1.1.1

[ralphl]

Thanks to help from this forum I finally got Office 97 to install (almost) correctly on wine. Word, PowerPoint, Access, etc all load and seem to function. However, the help feature doesn't work in any of the above. The .hlp files are loaded into drive_c>Program Files>Microsoft Office>Office. In Word when I click on "Help>Contents and Index, I get a list of topic, but when I select one nothing happens. If I go to search, it says search not implemented. If while in help I select help on help, it says "Cannot find "winhelp.hlp' (it is indeed loaded with the other .hlp files). Do you want to find this file yourself". If I say yes, it give me an "Open Box" showing folders in my home directory. However, it doesn't show the dot folders, so I can't select files from the .wine folder. I have Nautilus set up to display the dot files, but this doesn't carry over into the "Open" box. Similar things happen for other applications.

If anybody know how to show the dot folders in the "Open" box I would appreciate knowing. And, of course, if anybody knows any other way to get the help feature installed, please respond.

I am a newbie so please take that into account in your response.

Thanks

Ralph

PS. Outlook 97 didn't work so if anybody knows how to get that to work please respond.

[James McKenzie]

ralphl wrote:

Thanks to help from this forum I finally got Office 97 to install (almost) correctly on wine. Word, PowerPoint, Access, etc all load and seem to function. However, the help feature doesn't work in any of the above. The .hlp files are loaded into drive_c>Program Files>Microsoft Office>Office. In Word when I click on "Help>Contents and Index, I get a list of topic, but when I select one nothing happens. If I go to search, it says search not implemented. If while in help I select help on help, it says "Cannot find "winhelp.hlp' (it is indeed loaded with the other .hlp files). Do you want to find this file yourself". If I say yes, it give me an "Open Box" showing folders in my home directory. However, it doesn't show the dot folders, so I can't select files from the .wine folder. I have Nautilus set up to display the dot files, but this doesn't carry over into the "Open" box. Similar things happen for other applications.

If anybody know how to show the dot folders in the "Open" box I would appreciate knowing. And, of course, if anybody knows any other way to get the help feature installed, please respond.

I don't know if support for compiled help files (.chm) is available yet
in Wine. I went looking for the issue in the Bugzilla that I saw for
Wine 1.0, but could not find it.

Also, please post one entry for one problem.

James McKenzie

[dimesio]

I don't know if support for compiled help files (.chm) is available yet
in Wine. I went looking for the issue in the Bugzilla that I saw for
Wine 1.0, but could not find it.

The help files for Word 97 are .hlp, and they do work, sort of.

Ralph--after you've selected the help topic from the index, click the lower Okay button to get it to display.

[ralphl]

Thanks for the tip about pressing ok--stupid on my part to not think of that. However, there seem to be other help problems also.

1. When the help topic is displayed, the text is so small that it is hard to read. In fact all the text in Word is very small--the menu bar text, the toolbar tips, the status bar text, etc. Is there any way to increase the text size on all of this?

2. When I bring up Word 97 in windows and click help>Contents and Index, I get a completely different help window that I get under wine. The windows version is titled "Help Topics : Microsoft Word". Under that it has 3 tabs--Contents, Index, Find. Under Contents and Find, the topic pertain to Word. The wine version is an untitled box with a menu bar that has "File, Edit, Bookmark, Option, Help. Then it has 3 tabs--Summary, Index, and Back. Summary is blank. Index displays a new window with Index and Search tabs. Index gives the same topics as Index under windows. Search says it is not implemented. However, I find no way of getting the Word topics like I get under windows.

My conclusion is that I must not have the help function correctly loaded. Maybe the fact that it has a Menu bar with File>Open means it wants me to select a file and load it. However, I can't because no dot files (.wine) are displayed. Anyone know how I can get the same Word help in wine that I get in windows.

Ralph

[dimesio]

1. When the help topic is displayed, the text is so small that it is hard to read. In fact all the text in Word is very small--the menu bar text, the toolbar tips, the status bar text, etc. Is there any way to increase the text size on all of this?

If everything's too small, you can try changing the the screen resolution in winecfg (on the display tab).

2. When I bring up Word 97 in windows and click help>Contents and Index, I get a completely different help window that I get under wine...
...My conclusion is that I must not have the help function correctly loaded.

My conclusion is that Wine is not properly loading the help files. You can always file a bug report.

As far as getting Word to find the help files via the open file dialog, type c:\Program Files in the filename box and hit enter. You should be able to navigate from there by pointing and clicking.