Online Help

Display the online documentation and other resources to assist you in your design.

About Online Help

This help system provides combined online Help for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, Revit MEP, and Autodesk Revit. Much of the information is common across all of these products.

In some help topics, a legend beneath the topic title indicates that the entire topic applies to the indicated product or products, or to discipline-specific functions of Autodesk Revit. In addition, icons within a topic may indicate discipline-specific information.

In this example, the legend indicates that the entire topic applies to Revit MEP and MEP-related functions of Autodesk Revit.

To access Help

Do one of the following:

In the title bar of the Revit window, click (Help).
For context-sensitive Help:
- In a dialog, click or the Help button or link, or press F1.
- Move the cursor over a tool on the ribbon. When its tooltip displays, press F1.
  Note: If you turn off tooltips, context-sensitive Help (F1) for ribbon tools is also turned off. If you want context-sensitive Help to be available, use the Options dialog to set Tooltip assistance to Minimal.

To access online Help and other resources, in the title bar of the Revit window, click the arrow to the right of (Help), and select an option.

Default help access behavior

By default, when you access Help from the software, Revit detects whether you can connect to the Internet, and automatically displays the appropriate Help.

For users who can connect to the Internet, online Help displays. Online Help can be updated and added between releases. Users can comment on topics to ask questions and to share their experiences with the Revit community.
For users who cannot connect to the Internet, a locally stored copy of the Help displays. This offline version of Help is static; it is not updated between major releases, and it does not include some online-only help features, such as videos and learning paths.

You can change settings to view Help in your preferred format, and to specify your preferred web browser, as follows.

To change help settings

Navigate to the following folder:
%APPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit\<product name and release>
Open Revit.ini in a text editor.

Locate the following lines in the file:

[Documentation]
HelpBrowser=0
UseHelpServer=1
HelpFileLocation=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\<product> Content <release>\Help\<language-locale>\WBH\index.html

Make desired changes to Documentation settings. (See instructions below.)
Save changes to Revit.ini, and restart Revit.

To specify your preferred web browser for Help

In the Revit.ini file, change the value of the HelpBrowser setting.

Value	Result
HelpBrowser=0	Use your system default browser.
HelpBrowser=1	Use Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Note:

Save changes to Revit.ini, and restart Revit.
In Windows® 8, change your system default browser by right-clicking Start screenAll appsControl PanelProgramsSet Default Programs. Select the desired browser and click Set all defaults for this program.
If you use Internet Explorer to display Help, the same tab remains open as you move through different Help pages. For other browsers, a new tab opens every time the window changes.

To access Help using an Internet connection

In the Revit.ini file, make sure that UseHelpServer=1.
Save changes to Revit.ini, make sure you have an Internet connection, and restart Revit.

To change the language for online Help

For example, even though you installed the French version of the Revit software, you can specify that you want to access the English version of the online Help.

Note: This setting applies only to the Help that is available for online users. It does not affect the language for the locally stored help files accessed when you are working offline.

In the Revit.ini file, make sure that UseHelpServer=1.
Add the setting OnlineHelpLocale, and specify the 3-letter code for the desired language.
```
[Documentation]
UseHelpServer=1
OnlineHelpLocale=enu
```

To access Help offline or stored in another location

In the Revit.ini file, set UseHelpServer=0.
If you want to use the local copy of Help, save changes to Revit.ini, and restart Revit.
If you want to use a copy of Help stored in another location, change the value for HelpFileLocation to specify the path or URL to the help system.
```
[Documentation]
UseHelpServer=0
HelpFileLocation="M:\RevitResources\Help\en-US\WBH\index.html"
HelpBrowser=0
```

To access local Help

From the software, press F1 to access context-sensitive help. When the software detects that you are working offline, it automatically accesses the locally stored help files and displays the appropriate help topic.

To open the local Help system for browsing, do the following:

Navigate to the following location: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\<product> Content <release>\Help\<language-locale>\WBH
In the WBH directory, double-click index.htm to open the landing page for the Help.