.HLP files on a Mac

Factual Questions
1

Years and years and years ago, cmkeller sent me his famous Legion of Super-Heroes database, which was in the form of a help file.

At the time I owned Microsoft Office 4.x. IIRC, I was able to read the database with no trouble.

These days I use the nearly-latest version of Office for Mac OS X (I forget the version number, but it’s the version most nearly parallel to Office XP). I asked for, and received, a new edition of the Legion database from cmkeller.

I can view the database just fine here at work, on my PC running XP. But at home, with OS X 10.1.5, I cannot get Office to open it.

I feel certain I should be able to open .HLP files. After all, .PPT, .XLS and .DOC files are all cross-compatible. And Office/OS X does have its own help system.

Maybe I just need an additional patch or interpreter or something? Anyway, I’d appreciate any help the Teeming Millions could offer.

2

MacOS X’s Help system is merely a subset of HTML; odds are, whatever Microsoft’s .HLP format is, it’s something entirely different (and probably proprietary).

You may need a program to convert Windows HLP files to some other cross-platform-compatable format. Here is one such tool; I don’t know if there are any comparable free alternatives.

3

Hmm. Not a great solution, but I’ll take it if there’s no alternative.

4

Here’s a free decompiler (scroll down to the Decompiling section).