Classic VB - Where can I find the help files for VB 6?

With VB 6, the help system in not a standard help system as it was in earlier versions of VB, instead it is a separate program (called "MSDN Library") which integrates with VB as a normal help system would.


The MSDN Library was provided on separate CD's to Visual Basic (or Visual Studio) itself, which unfortunately means that people tend to lose them, or throw them away without realising what the software is.

If this has happened to you, you will want to get hold of the MSDN Library CD's, but it needs to be an old version (October 2001 or earlier), as VB6 was removed from the library after the release of VB.Net. The options to get hold of this are very limited - the best bet is to find the CD's second hand somewhere.

If you have got the MSDN library installed but it doesn't work properly, see if this page helps.


Luckily the VB6 part of the library is still available online (but this does not integrate with the VB development environment, and is likely to be removed at some point :(). The main page can be found here, and probably the most important section is the Language Reference.


As a web based system is much slower (and quite cumbersome) it will probably help if you search the documentation - but this will include many other items, including those for VB.Net which is very different!


Helping You Help Yourself with online MSDN Searches
Sometimes in getting help on something, the key is knowing what to search for. This is something that isn't always intuitive. However, there are certain clues that, if you can spot them, will go a long way.

Go ahead and open up http://search.msdn.microsoft.com and type in "TryParse" as the search. Note the results. Hoo-boy that's a lot. Now assuming that what we are trying to do is convert a string to a double. We could look through the results, or change the results to "Double.TryParse" Bam! Now it becomes second on the list.

This method works wonders for a lot of search criteria. IF you want to know how to use the .Filter property of a Recordset, search for Recordset.Filter. The key is to use the parent object as part of the search. parentobject.method


Compare the results for searching for .Filter vs Recordset.Filter. The differences are incredible.

So, the next time you need to search for something on MSDN, try including the parent class/object name. You maybe able to find what you want.

One more useful snippet for you, is that you can often (but not always) limit the results to VB6 relevant documentation by adding this to your query (including the quotes): "Visual Basic for Applications Reference"
..if that returns no results, try using this instead: "Visual Basic 6"

-tg