You cannot view the Help topic when you click a Help topic from the Office Assistant

When you click a Help topic from the Office Assistant, nothing happens and the Help topic is not displayed.

This problem occurs when the focus of an Office program is set to a drive that is no longer available. The following cases describe the most common situations where this can occur.

Case 1: Floppy Disk Drive

• After you open or close a file on a floppy disk and then remove the disk from the drive.
  
  -or-
• After you access a floppy disk using the Open or Save As commands, click Cancel, and then remove the floppy disk from the drive.

Case 2: Network Drive

• After you have disconnected from a network drive on which you have opened or closed a file.
  
  -or-
• After you have opened or closed a file on a network drive and the network drive is now unavailable because of a network outage or a momentary disruption.

To change the focus of the Office program to an available drive, click Open on the File menu, and then click Cancel.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

When you use the Open command and the Office program detects that the drive it has been working with is now unavailable, the Office program will change the focus back to the hard disk. After changing the focus of the Office program to an available drive, you can click a Help topic, and the Help topic will be displayed.

For additional information about related problems with Help, please click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: