Anchors

An Anchor, also know as a bookmark, is an internal marker within your Topic. It is very useful for instances where you want to jump to a point in a long Topic. You may have noticed on some websites, where you have a page with lots of text that you have to scroll down until you reach the end. On some pages the author might have left a link at the end and named it "Go to Top of Page". And when you click it, it brings you back to the top of the page. That can be very useful for websites, but may not be applicable to your topic, but the point is that they are useful for helping your users navigate topics with lots of text.

For example, click this link now -> Go to the last Paragraph of this page, then click "Go to the Third Paragraph" when you are ready.

That will bring you back to here. So how did I do that? Well, first I typed in all the help text into the topic, then I looked at where I could make it easier for the user to navigate around the text. At the end of this page is a paragraph entitled "This is the last Paragraph". I placed my cursor at the beginning of the line and selected "Insert | Anchor". and the following screen will appeared:-

I typed in "TheLastParagraph" and pressed Enter, which is the same as clicking the [Insert] button. This inserted a small blue image of an anchor. If you pass your mouse over an anchor it will tell you the name of that anchor.

Linking to an Anchor

Next, I needed to link to that Anchor, so I went to the top of the page and highlighted the text that I wanted the user to click on, in this case it was the text, "Go to the last Paragraph of this page". Then I right-clicked on the selected text and selected "Create a link", then "To an Anchor on this Page" and then I clicked on the Anchor "TheLastParagraph". So in summary, insert your Anchor first, then create your link to that Anchor. You can create more than one link to the same Anchor.

Anchor Names

The anchor name can only use letters and numbers, i.e. A to Z and 0 to 9. No spaces or other characters are allowed.

Editing an existing Anchor

Click on an Anchor and you will see the following screen:

Change the Anchor name to your new name. Any existing links to the old Anchor name will be automatically changed to the new Anchor name. Clicking the [Show Advanced Options] button will reveal the HelpID field.

The "HelpID" field is only needed if you wish to reference this Anchor from your application. For example, if you have written an application that references topics using HelpIDs, you may want to go directly to the Anchor of the page. To do this, you will need to specify a HelpID. You can either type a unique HelpID in, or you can click on the [Get HelpID] button, and the next available HelpID will be assigned.

Advanced Options

On the "Insert Anchor" screen, if you click on the [Show Advanced Options] button, you will see the following:

Now we see a list of all the existing anchors in this Topic, which can be useful for stopping us typing in duplicate names. This list is also useful to allow us to change any existing anchors. Simply double-click on an existing Anchor, or select it and click the [Edit Anchor] button to make changes.

The other thing that you will see here is the HelpID field. This is described in detail above. You will only need to assign HelpIDs if you want to reference these Anchors from an external application. If this does not apply to you then you can ignore this field. Also, the HelpID field is only relevant for HtmlHelp.

Clicking the [Hide Advanced Options] button will return the screen to the simpler options.

This is the last Paragraph

Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text. Here is some text.

Go to the Third Paragraph.