Help Filters for Visual Studio

Visual Studio product documentation includes several pre-defined filters that help you scope the items that appear in the Help Contents and Index windows. These filters do not affect Search. You can change your current filter by using the Filtered by drop-down list on the Contents window and Index window.

Product and Technology Filters

The following filters are available for the MSDN Library.

Term

Description

.NET Framework

Includes the core documentation for the .NET Framework, ASP.NET, and language references but excludes information that is specific to development in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE).

Enterprise Servers

Includes Exchange Server, Biztalk Server, Commerce Server, and SQL Server documentation, among others.

Office Development

Includes the core documentation for Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System, plus Microsoft Office documentation sets, among others.

Platform SDK

Includes documentation about Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server, XML, Internet Explorer development, and Win32 development, among others.

Smart Device Development

Includes the core documentation for the .NET Compact Framework, plus topics about Visual Studio, Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++ that relate to Smart Device development, among others.

Team Explorer

Includes the core Visual Studio Team System documentation, plus Microsoft Document Explorer Help.

Visual Basic

Designed for developers who are coding Windows applications or Web applications by using Visual Basic. The core .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer, and Win32 and COM documentation sets are included, among others.

Does not include topics in MSDN that apply to earlier versions of Visual Basic.

Visual C#

Designed for developers who are coding Windows applications or Web applications by using Visual C#. The core .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer, Smart Device development, and XML documentation sets are included, among others.

Visual C++

Includes the core Visual C++ documentation, the Platform SDK documentation, and the .NET Framework documentation, among others.

Visual Studio Team System

Includes the core Visual Studio Team System documentation, plus general Visual Studio documentation and SQL Server documentation, among others.

Web Development (.NET)

Includes the core Visual Web Developer documentation, plus the ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, Dynamic HTML, and the .NET Framework documentation sets, among others.

Windows Forms Development

Includes the core documentation for Windows Forms, data, debugging, and compiler documentation for Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++, among others.

Express Edition Filters

The following filters are available only if you have installed the MSDN Express Library.

Term

Description

Visual Basic Express

Includes the core Visual Basic documentation plus the core Windows SDK documentation set.

Visual C# Express

Includes the core Visual C# documentation plus the core Windows SDK documentation set.

Visual C++ Express

Includes the core Visual C++ documentation plus the core Windows SDK documentation set.

Visual Web Developer Express

Includes the core Visual Web Developer documentation plus the ASP.NET documentation set.

See Also

Other Resources

Visual Studio Help Reference