# Unable to use Help in MS Office 2007

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unable-to-use-help-in-ms-office-2007/629775>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 29, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unable-to-use-help-in-ms-office-2007/629775 "2012-07-29T16:15:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e8c25b/32.png) [@Lok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lok)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unable-to-use-help-in-ms-office-2007/629775/1 "2012-07-29T16:15:13Z")

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I am messing around in Excel on a database, and couldn’t remember how to do something easily so I hit the help button. I get a notice that it is downloading “transition.htm” to my computer, which opens up a new tab with a broken image on it. By telling the Help window to stay offline, I can get the top level stuff in the main window, but the left side links are useless. And when I use the links in the main window, it just downloads an unformated page which I can’t get off of, because all the links on it are to places on my computer that don’t exist. In Word, I can’t even get the main Help window to show anything.

Is there anyway to actually get a help function that works in Office 2007?

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**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unable-to-use-help-in-ms-office-2007/629775/2 "2012-07-29T22:14:30Z")

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Is IE your default browser? If not try that; if so try clearing the cache and resetting all security zones to default level.

Try turning off your anti-virus.

In Excel, click the Office button, go to Excel Options, and Diagnose.

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**Author:** ![Lok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e8c25b/32.png) [@Lok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lok)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unable-to-use-help-in-ms-office-2007/629775/3 "2012-07-30T01:02:57Z")

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IE wasn’t my default. Switched to it and things started working correctly. Stupid MS. ☹ Now I just need to remember to make IE my default browser if I want to use Help functions. Really stupid MS.

Thanks for the help.