Testing online Help

To test online Help, you should test topics in the viewer that your users will be using to display Help. For example, test the compiled .chm file, or, for web help, test the topics in several Internet browsers.

  1. Check the table of contents. Read the organization of topics and click every link. Your Help authoring tool often has tools for checking this as well.
  2. Check each topic in the Help window for layout problems, typos, and grammatical errors. Remember to check the Help Window, not the source file before compiling. Allow lots of time for this: 250 topics can take six hours.
  3. Click every link in every topic.
  4. Check the relevancy of each Related Topics jump. In general, an overview topic can link to related command, dialog box, and procedure topics. A command topic can link to related dialog boxes, overviews, and procedures. A procedure topic can link to related command and dialog box topics, overviews, and other procedures.
  5. Click keywords on the Index tab to make sure they display an expected result.
  6. If you have context-sensitive Help links, check every link in the software. You can also use tools in the Microsoft HTML Help compiler.
  7. Spellcheck your help file. Do this several times. Use Word's grammar checker, if at all possible. If you use a single-source tool such as AuthorIT or HelpandManual, always output the file to a Word document and use Word’s grammar/spelling checker to find problems. The other tools do not have reliable spellcheckers. Regenerate the Word file several times and run the spellchecker/grammar checker four times. For .chm files, read Spellcheck a chm file for online Help.