How-to's: Where to begin... (within BW7 itself) Part One

Someone left a comment asking if we could have more posts on practical helps for BibleWorks users. Indeed, we will get to those, but let me start off by introducing some of the first places BW users should go to learn tips and tricks about the program (in other words some of this stuff already exists), but we will try to make you aware of your options.

• Within the BibleWorks program itself there are several places to get help. Along the Menu bar in BW 7 proper you can go to the one titled "Help." There are a couple of options here that will be especially useful.

• The option labeled "Getting Started" would be an obvious place to begin. Clicking on links through this will bring up some short videos that explain the basic set-up of BW7 and try to familiarize users with how the BW7 was designed.
• From there your next step would be the option "BibleWorks Study Guides." These have numerous short clips that help you navigate through BW7 and do specific tasks. If you haven't browsed through these you're really missing out. Even if you don't think these may be relevant, I encourage you to check them out because you might learn something that you can apply elsewhere.
• Finally the "Online Help Contents" is the BW7 "manual," but even this was designed to put some helpful hints right at your fingertips. If the Help is open, there are tabs on the left side that say "Contents," "Index," "Search," and "Favorites". If you click on Contents and you just opened the Help file, you'll get a page with the Table of Contents, but also you'll see "Frequently Used Links." There you can get quick help with using the Command Line if that's one of your weaknesses.
• A little used feature is the "Favorites" tab. Maybe you are reading through the Help manual, but get tired and want to do something else. If you are currently in the middle of chapter 37 you can click the tab "Favorites" and then at the bottom click "Add." Essentially this puts a little bookmark where you were and you can either leave or go do something else and easily return to this same spot when you go back to Favorites and click on that link.
• The Index can be also very helpful for finding something if you're not sure how to look it up. Otherwise, Searching for keywords is the final way to find something in the Manual.

• There is also context specific help. For this, you hold the mouse cursor over the area where you want specific help and then press F1. This will load the Online Help manual to the area of Help that relates to the place where your mouse was situated. This is another little known, but very helpful place to begin.
• In the Search window side of the screen, there is a little icon of a hammer and wrench. If you click on that the last option is a link to see Command Line Examples (This is also located under the option "Search" in the menu bar). This too is very helpful when you're not sure why you can't type out the right things to get BW to do what you want.
• The last major Help options in BW7 are found under the Help Menu under the option "BibleWorks on the Internet." (Technically then these aren't "available" within the BW7 program, but you will need to make sure you have Internet.) Here you can go straight to BibleWorks official customer support by selecting the option "Get Support" or you can go to the BibleWorks forums. The official BibleWorks forums are a WEALTH of information. If you use BibleWorks but have never visited the forums, you're missing out. Here you can post questions and sometimes the official BibleWorks staff will help out, but mostly this is a user-community. If you want official help, you would contact the BW staff through the Get Support options. Here, however, you'll find BibleWorks users of various skill levels and you will just about always find a quick answer to your question (assuming that one exists).