The Visual Studio Combined Help Collection

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The Visual Studio documentation is organized in Help collections. The Visual Studio Combined Help Collection is currently the default collection. If you have installed a Professional edition or higher, then this collection includes the original product documentation, plus any additional Help that is designed to be integrated with Visual Studio, for example, the Help collections for Visual Studio updates and add-ons. If you have installed a Standard or Express Edition, then this collection includes a subset of the original product documentation, plus some additional Help that is designed to be integrated with Visual Studio, for example, the Help collections for Visual Studio updates and add-ons.

If no Help topics other than this one appear in the Help system, either the documentation has not been installed or the installed Help collection has been excluded by using the Combined Help Collection Manager. If you decide not to install the documentation on the computer, you can still access it on MSDN Online. For more information, see Help Sources: Local Help and Online Help.

For more information about how to install Help, see How to: Install Help for Visual Studio.

To determine whether additional Help collections are available for inclusion in the Visual Studio Combined Help Collection, see Visual Studio Combined Help Collection Manager.