Edit a help file?

June 15, 2005 11:15 AM

Back in the day (about 7 years ago, anyway), Windows came with a utility that allowed the savvy user to edit compiled help files.

I cannot remember the name of the utility, or where to find it - does anyone here know? I would also like to know if this thing exists for XP. I'd ask a Tech Writer list, but I'm in a bit of crunch, and you folks are always so great. btw, the files I would like to edit are .chm, and I don't have any of the 'standard' tools available (Robo or Frame). Thanks as always.

posted by dbmcd to technology (5 comments total)

The HTML Help Workshop might be what you're looking for, but I don't remember if it decompiles existing chm files.
posted by Loser at 11:32 AM on June 15, 2005

Yeah, that's it; select File->Decompile to, er, decompile a chm to a directory.

Here's a link to the download page.
posted by Loser at 11:37 AM on June 15, 2005

Is there a way to do this with .hlp files?
posted by Four Flavors at 2:07 PM on June 15, 2005

Googling for "winhelp decompiler" turns up a mess of hits, but I don't have any first hand experience with them...

The HTML Help Workshop will only decompile hpj files.
posted by Loser at 4:26 PM on June 15, 2005

Loser. thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for!! I think when I last used it, it wasn't for html help, just regular 'online' (within the application) help.
The HTML Help Workshop did indeed de-compile the files, but without the file-naming schema, it was very hard for me to re-compile them appropriately.
I was needing to insert the files in printed form into a document - and thought I might be able to transform the individual help files into Word files in a bulk process.
Alas, that was not to be; so I just shoved the whole thing through PDF, and inserted the new PDF into an existing one. Thanks again, though - y'all came through for me!
posted by dbmcd at 4:36 PM on June 15, 2005