9 Replies Latest reply: May 22, 2010 1:54 PM by William LaMartin RSS

    Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5

    William LaMartin Community Member

      When I click on Help in Photoshop CS5 (installed yesterday), I recieve a popup message from Adobe Community  Help saying "The requested page requires an Internet connection," and I cannot do anything with the Help screen.

       

      I have an Internet connection.  In fact, if I open my Photoshop CS4 program, I can access the Community Help, it opens IE to the online help page for Photoshop CS4, where in the lower right-hand corner there is a yellow box with a link to CS5 help which if I click on it produces the Photoshop CS5 Help page.

       

      So why can't I access HELP from CS5 Photoshop directly,and how do I tell CS5 that I have an Internet connection.

       

      As a side note, this is also a problem with Illustrator CS5.

        • 1. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
          John Joslin Community Member

          Did you do a selective install and miss a component you need?


          If not try the settings in Windows > Extensions.

          • 2. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
            Zeno Bokor CommunityMVP

            Try disabling your firewall. If that doesn't help then try asking in the Community  Help forum

            • 3. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
              William LaMartin Community Member

              To the best of my knowledge I did a full installation. 

               

              For Windows > Extensions, I have these options: Access CS Live, CS News and Resources, CS Review, kuler and Mini Bridge.

               

              I know what you are looking for because in CS4, I have a Connections item that is missing in CS5.

              • 5. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
                William LaMartin Community Member

                Thanks for the link. But I am not sure that is my problem.  I can Access Adobe Help from Photoshop CS4 on the same computer. But I will try it if I don't find another solution in a few days.

                 

                I installed CS5 on both my desktop and one laptop computer.  On the laptop, the Help in CS5 works with no problem.  On the desktop is where I have the problem.  I think there is a possibility that I may have selected an option to use only local help when I installed on the desktop, but I am not sure.  There should be some menu item in Photoshop (and the other CS5 programs) that will allow me to change that selection.  Can anyone provide that link?

                 

                 

                In the interim, I have downloaded the CS5 PDF help files for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

                • 6. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
                  Zeno Bokor CommunityMVP

                  Let me ask again. Do you have a firewall active? did you try to disable it? Also try updating the Help Client from here:

                  http://www.adobe.com/support/chc/

                   

                  There aren't any options in Photoshop that control how the Help Client works as that is an external application. The Help Client can download the help files to your computer so that you can use them offline but that's obviously not an option if it cannot connect to the internet.

                  • 7. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
                    William LaMartin Community Member

                    I have Windows Firewall.  It is set to allow the CS5 programs to access the Internet.  Additionally, the CS4 products have no trouble accessing the Internet.

                     

                    I tried your link earlier.  It said that the same version of the program was already installed on my computer and would I like to run it now.  Is said OK to  that and an Adobe Community Help window opened with an hourglass indicating that something was happening.  I let this continue for about thirty minutes and then killed the process.  So Adobe Community Help is on my computer (as can be also seen in the installed programs of add/remove). Perhaps I should uninstall and try a reinstall—except that it is working for the CS4 programs.

                    • 8. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
                      Zeno Bokor CommunityMVP

                      It's not the same, in CS4 when you press F1 it opens a web page in your browser while in CS5 it opens the Adobe Community Help application which then in turn connects to the internet. Try reinstalling the Help client as explained in the technote posted by John and if that doesn't work then ask in the Community Help forum.

                      • 9. Re: Can't access HELP in Photoshop CS5
                        William LaMartin Community Member

                        The problem is solved.

                         

                        I went and found the executable for Community Help.  It is Adobe Help.exe.  I then ran it and received the following message: To access or download help, connect to the Internet or deselect “Display Local Help Contents only” in Preferences.

                         

                        Well, I could not find any such thing in Photoshop preferences. It then dawned on me that I should be looking in the preferences of Community Help.  And there it was—the option to display local content only.  However, it was set to no, so I should be seeing help from the Internet.

                         

                        That is when the previous remark about the firewall came back to me, and I realized that what was needed was to open the firewall for Adobe Help.exe and not for Photoshop.

                         

                        Thanks for your assistance