Setup Microsoft Help Explorer (Visual Studio Combined Help Collection)

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As we all know, the main resource for help on Visual Studio and .net is the Microsoft Help Explorer that is installed with Visual Studio. Sometimes it is called the Visual Studio Combined Help Collection. Most of the Microsoft development tools (for example SDKs for Office and Visual Studio) but also tools from other vendors install their help resources into this Explorer.
It is really nice if it works. But on my system I ended up with not only one central Help Explorer but with three, each containing different content. One came with Visual Studio 2005, one with Orcas and another with the Visual Studio SDK. For some reason only the last one showed up the .net-framework help, but every time I pressed F1 in Studio the first one – without the content – opened.
I knew that there is somewhere a settings dialog where you can see the installed content of the Explorer and enable or disable some of it. But Microsoft does a very good job in hiding this dialog. It is shown like any page of the help. To find it just go to the Index and look for “Visual Studio 2005 Combined Help Collection Manager” or for Orcas Beta 2 “…2007…” – I think they will change the name in the final Visual Studio 2008.

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