Basic Working Procedures > Links, Anchors, Macros, Scripts and HTML > Anchors

In this topic:

Normally, topic links execute jumps to the top of the target topic. However, often you will also want to create jumps to some point inside a topic. This is done with anchors (sometimes also referred to as "bookmarks" in books on help), which are named "targets" that you insert at any position within a topic so that you can jump to them with a link.

Anchors no longer have the captions they had in Help & Manual 3. Instead, they are identified by an anchor icon in the editor.

How to insert an anchor:

1.	Click in the text at the point where you want to insert the anchor (i.e. the position you want to be able to jump to with your links). Don't select any text, if you do it will be overwritten by the anchor!

2.	Open the Insert Anchor dialog box. There are several different ways to do this:

•	Press Ctrl+H

•	Select the Insert Anchor button in the Toolbar

•	Select Topic Anchor... in the Insert menu

3.	Type in a descriptive ID for the anchor in the Anchor ID: field. This will be displayed in the link dialog when you are creating links so it should be easy to identify. You cannot use spaces or special characters (Help & Manual will not allow you to use illegal characters).

Like topic IDs, anchor IDs can be up to 256 characters long. However, since you need to view anchor IDs in dialog boxes in Help & Manual it is advisable to keep them relatively short.

4.	If you want to use a help context number you can type it in manually. You can also set Help & Manual to assign help context numbers to anchors automatically in Project > Project Properties > Common Properties > Topic IDs & Help Context.

5.	Type in any keywords you want to associate with the anchor (see below for details).

How to link to an anchor:

1.	First proceed exactly as you would for creating a normal topic link

2.	Open the Edit Hyperlink dialog box. Just double-click on the link to open the dialog if it is not already open. The anchor is selected in the Edit Hyperlink dialog.

3.	Select the anchor ID from the drop-down list in the Anchor in Topic: field and click on .

To quickly create a link to an anchor in the current or another topic just create the link with Drag & Drop and then double-click on the link to select the target anchor in the dialog.

Linking to anchors in embedded topics:

Embedded topics may also contain anchors. However, when you try to link to a topic containing an embedded topic you will not see the embedded topic's anchors in the Anchor in Topic: list. They are there, however – you just can't see them because they cannot be exported to the current view.

1.	To link to an anchor in an embedded topic first select the source topic and make a note of the anchor IDs you want to link to. (The "source topic" is the topic that is embedded.)

2.	Then create the link and enter the ID of the anchor you want to link to manually in the Anchor in Topic: field. If you enter the anchor ID correctly this will work.

Linking to anchors in Browser-based Help:

You can also create URL links from your application or from web pages to anchors in Browser-based Help output so that users are taken directly to a specific point in a topic when they use your links. The syntax is exactly the same as the standard HTML syntax for URLs containing anchor references:

index.html?topicname.htm#anchorname

•	Note that this is different from the syntax required in Help & Manual 3. There a comma was required instead of the # character between the topic name and the anchor name.

•	The topic name is simply the Topic ID of the topic, plus the extension .htm. The entire URL must be written in lower case because Help & Manual automatically converts all file names to lower case in HTML output for compatibility with Unix and Linux servers.

See Context calls to Browser-based Help for some more details on this.

Using keywords in anchors:

You can also associate ordinary keywords (index keywords) with anchors. Selecting these keywords in the help index will then jump to the anchor instead of the top of the topic. See Keywords and Indexes more information on using keywords and Using keywords with anchors for more information on using keywords in combination with anchors.

•	Type the keywords into the Keywords: field of the Anchor dialog. You can enter both main keywords and sub-keywords. Use the TAB key to enter sub-keywords (an indented keyword automatically becomes the sub-keyword of the keyword above it).

•	Typing a space or tab in front of a keyword automatically makes it a sub-keyword of the entry directly above it. (Only one level of sub-keywords is allowed.)

It is possible to have the same keywords in both the topic's Topic Options and in one or more anchors in the same topic. However, if you want your index entries to enable jumps to the anchor without confusing the user it is better to avoid this.

Don't edit anchor IDs:

Changing and editing anchor IDs is not advisable. Unlike topic IDs Help & Manual does not update links to anchor IDs if you change them. Also, no internal index of references to anchor IDs is maintained. This means that if you change an anchor ID you may create dead links that will be very difficult to find, because they will not be listed in your project reports.