To create a link you can either, highlight a phrase, press F4 and select the destination to link to, or, enable AutoLinking. AutoLinking will search your help text at compile time, for matching Titles and Keywords and create links for them if they do not already exist.

For example, let's say that I have some help text as follows: "Please contact Support for further help" - if I have a Topic called "Support" or a Keyword called "Support", then this word will be automatically converted to a link when compiling. This means that you don't need to worry about whether you have remembered to create all your links or not. Fast-Help will automatically do it for you.

So how does AutoLinking work?

Well, you tell Fast-Help how you want AutoLinking to search your Help Text. Select "Project | AutoLink Settings" and the following screen will appear. If "Topic Titles" is checked, then all your Topic Titles will be used when searching your help text. If you have more than one topic with the same title, then the first unique title is used. Only Topic titles are used - Heading titles are ignored. Similarly, if you check the "Keywords from the Index" option, all your keywords will be used and where there are duplicates, the first unique keyword will be used.

AutoLink only the first occurrence in each Topic

If this option is checked, then AutoLinking will only create a link from the first occurrence it finds in each Topic. If unchecked, then it will create links to every repeating phrase it finds.

Ignore the Nonscroll Region

If your Project design does not allow for links in your Nonscroll region, which is very common, then you will want to check this option and the nonscroll region will be ignored.

Logs

Every time you compile, a log is made of all AutoLink changes to your Project. To view this log, open the "AutoLink Settings" screen and click the option "Click here to view the last compiled AutoLink Log".

Internet Links and E-mail Addresses

If you have help text like this: "Our home page is http://www.abc.com", then AutoLinking can automatically create a URL link for you. Check the option "Internet URLs", then on the "Internet Links" tab, type in the prefixes that you want AutoLinking to search for. These can be prefixes such as "http:" or "www."

If you want AutoLinking to automatically create e-mail links for you, check the option "E-mail addresses", then on the "Internet Links" tab, type in the extensions you want AutoLinking to search for. You only need to type in the domain extension, such as ".com" or ".co.uk". AutoLinking will then find the beginning of the e-mail address and create a "mailto" link for you.

Exceptions

You can really customize how AutoLinking creates your links. For example, if you have a keyword ".gif" and in your help text you refer to "we use .gif files", then AutoLinking would normally create a link on the ".gif" phrase. But you may not want that. If so, then click on the "Exceptions" tab and type in ".gif" and AutoLinking will ignore this as a phrase to look for, regardless of whether it is a Keyword or a Topic Title.

Custom Links

You may want to override certain links or create links to other CHM files. To do this, click on the "Custom Links" tab and type in the phrase followed by an equals sign, followed by the exact link. For example. If I wanted the phrase "see Calendar for more information", I may want the phrase "see Calendar" to open the "Information.html" page in a chm file called "Calendar.chm". So, on the Custom Links tab I would add a new line as follows:
  see Calendar=its:calendar.chm::/Information.html

Stopping AutoLinking from changing your Topic

If you would prefer to not to have AutoLinking create links in a particular topic, click the Properties tab for that topic and check the option "Tell AutoLinking to ignore this page."

How do I Activate AutoLinking?

AutoLinking only works on HtmlHelp and Website Help. When you press F8 for compile, check the "AutoLink" option to turn AutoLinking on.