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Visual Studio 2010 shipped with a new help system - Help Viewer 1.0. Help Viewer 1.0 is built on common standards such as XHTML and .zip file format.

Developers can leverage the ms-xhelp:// protocol documented in this SDK to implement their own Help experiences and Help viewers using the Help Viewer 1.0 runtime.

Files

Status: Deleted This download is no longer available on microsoft.com. The downloads below are archives provided by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine from the Microsoft Download Center prior to April 2023.

Files
HelpViewerSDK.EXE SHA1: b835b522eeaa606bb71902f4301ad3b7c0cfc4c3 Size: 462 KB

File sizes and hashes are retrieved from the Wayback Machine’s indexes. They may not match the latest versions of files hosted on Microsoft servers.

Any of the Visual Studio 2010 family of products, including the Visual Studio Express products.
This requirement is for the Help Viewer 1.0 runtime, which only ships with those products.

This download is a self-extracting .exe, which will simply install some documentation in the form of HTML files, and some code samples. No executable code is included.

To install the SDK:
1. Download the HelpViewerSDK.exe file.
2. Execute it and when prompted, specify a folder location where you want to place the extracted files.
3. Navigate to the folder where you extracted the files to - you will find HelpViewerSDK.zip.
4. Right-click on HelpViewerSDK.zip and select "Extract All..." (you may use the current location or an alternate of your choice)
5. Double-click on 00_HelpSDK_OverviewAndFAQ.htm to get started with the documentation for the SDK.

For any problems with installation or general questions, please leave a note via The Help Guy blog.