IOleWindow::ContextSensitiveHelp

Determines whether context-sensitive help mode should be entered during an in-place activation session.

HRESULT ContextSensitiveHelp(

BOOL fEnterMode	//Specifies whether or not to enter help mode
);

Parameter
fEnterMode

[in] Specifies TRUE if help mode should be entered; FALSE if it should be exited.

Return Values
S_OK

The help mode was entered or exited successfully, depending on the value passed in fEnterMode.

E_OUTOFMEMORY

Out of memory.

E_INVALIDARG

The argument is invalid.

E_UNEXPECTED

An unexpected error occurred.

Comments
Applications can invoke context-sensitive help when the user

presses SHIFT+F1, then clicks a topic
presses F1 when a menu item is selected.

When SHIFT+F1 is pressed, either the frame or active object can receive the keystrokes. If the container's frame receives the keystrokes, it calls its containing document's IOleWindow::ContextSensitiveHelp method with fEnterMode set to TRUE. This propagates the help state to all of its in-place objects so they can correctly handle the mouse click or WM_COMMAND.

If an active object receives the SHIFT+F1 keystrokes, it calls the container's IOleInPlaceSite::ContextSensitiveHelp method with fEnterMode TRUE, which then recursively calls each of its in-place sites until there are no more to be notified. The container then calls its document's or frame's ContextSensitiveHelp method with fEnterMode TRUE.

When in context-sensitive help mode, an object that receives the mouse click can either:

Ignore the click if it does not support context-sensitive help, or
Tell all the other objects to exit context-sensitive help mode with ContextSensitiveHelp set to FALSE and then provide help for that context.

An object in context-sensitive help mode that receives a WM_COMMAND should tell all the other in-place objects to exit context-sensitive help mode and then provide help for the command.

If a container application is to support context-sensitive help on menu items, it must either provide its own message filter so that it can intercept the F1 key or ask the OLE library to add a message filter by calling OleSetMenuDescriptor, passing valid, non-NULL values for the lpFrame and lpActiveObj parameters.