VS 2010 Help Viewer - Adding URL Shortcuts from Explorer Favorites to Help Viewers Favorites list

Question

Hi all,

I just changed from WXP to W7 and have reinstalled VS 2010 Professional and VS 2010 SP1. From the WXP installation I have a folder tree containing numerous URL-shortcuts to the VS 2010 documentation. The targets look like this: ms-xhelp:///?method=page&id=T:SYSTEM.ARRAY&product=VS&productversion=100&locale=en-US&topiclocale=EN-US&topicversion=90&SQM=2 When the Help Viewer is started these URL shortcuts are properly processed by Help Viewer after double clicking in Explorer.

I would like to copy this favorite folder-tree and the contained URL-shortcuts to Help Viewer's Favorites. Any ideas how to do that?

Many thanks in advance.

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Regards Uwe

Answer 1

Hi Uwe,

Would you let me know the folder path that contains ms-xhelp shortcuts?  I'm running VS 2010 on Windows 7 with local help documentation.

thanks,

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Forrest Guo | MSDN Community Support | Feedback to manager

Answer 2

Hi Forrest,

the folder tree with the existing ms-xhelp shortcuts is located in %Userprofile%\Documents. Most of the shortcuts point to local documents. It was placed there by creating bookmarks with H3Viewer from "The Helpware Group" which I used with VS2010 Professional GA. Actually, the root folder of that shortcut tree can be configured in H3Viewer.

As already stated these ms-xhelp shortcuts can be used to call the documents with MS HelpViewer too. I would like to import (I have more than 500 of these shortcuts) the shortcut structure now to MS HelpViewer that was shipped with VS2010 SP1. I want to do that because I don't like using to bookmark repositories. That's the motivation behind my original question.

I have to confess that I was not able to find any folder or "favorite" shortcut created with MS HelpViewer. Neither as files nor as entries in the registry. So where are the stored?

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Regards Uwe

Answer 3

Hi Uwe,

I'm afraid VS 2010 Help Viewer "favorites" is not compatible with H3Viewer bookmarks.  Help Viewer in VS2010 stores data in specified format like .mshc .mshi.  Visual Studio stores metadata at: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\content\Microsoft\store\

best regards,

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Forrest Guo | MSDN Community Support | Feedback to manager