How to create a CHM Help file for your Software applications.

Creating a help manual for your application makes it easy for user of your application to understand it and use it properly without any external help. Now as we are talking about the help files, Compiled HTML help is a best solution. With Compiled HTML you can create your own eBook or a user manual for your applications.

CHM files are some-what a set of Html type web pages which has a table of content that are hyperlinked. So, lets talk on how you create your own CHM help file or an eBook etc. The steps are as follow:

To create your CHM file you need to have Microsoft Office Word.

Step # 1.

First Create your help document on Microsoft Office Word. It is like creating a normal document. Create Headings for the topics of your file and then add your content for each heading or you can add sub headings. To give a clear idea I have created a sample document in which I use three main headings and two sub headings for each main heading, see picture below.

Step # 2:

Now as you done creating your word document, you have to convert it to a CHM file. To convert it from word file to CHM file you need a DOC to CHM converter, which is easily available on the web. I am using Macrobject’s Word-To-CHM converter to demonstrate you how it would be done. Now let me take the above document and convert it to CHM using the converter.

Complete all required fields and click convert. You will find a yellow question mark icon file, on the destination folder you have given for output CHM file, see below.

Step # 3

Use the converted CHM file wherever you want, for example as a user manual for your application.

I hope you will find this quick tutorial helpful. Please do comment if you need any help.

Download Word-To-CHM converter here.