HelpEdit
Free Help Authoring Software for Windows
Current version: 1.0 | Freeware for Windows 10 & 11
HelpEdit is a free Windows help authoring tool designed for creating professional documentation, user manuals, online help systems, and technical guides.
Key Features
- Create structured software documentation projects
- Visual HTML editor for help topics
- Topic tree with root and child pages
- WebHelp export with searchable content
- CHM help file generation
- PDF manual export
- Internal topic links and external hyperlinks
- Image insertion, replacement, removal, and resizing
- Table editor with row and column tools
- HTML import with local asset handling
- Project settings for fonts, colors, links, tables, headers, and footer
- Keywords and index entries for topics
- Reusable variables, snippets, and conditional content
- Free for personal and commercial use
Create Structured Help Projects
HelpEdit organizes documentation into a clear topic tree. You can add root topics, create child topics, rename pages, move topics up or down, change their hierarchy, and build a logical table of contents for your manual. Each topic has its own HTML content file and can include keywords, index entries, and format-specific publishing options. The project format uses .hff files and stores content in an open folder structure.
Visual HTML Help Editor
The built-in editor lets you write help pages without manually coding HTML. You can format text, choose fonts and font sizes, apply colors, set line spacing, create headings, align paragraphs, and use bold, italic, underline, bullet lists, and numbered lists.
HelpEdit also supports richer documentation elements such as:
• Images with replace and remove options
• Resizable images
• Tables with editable rows and columns
• Internal topic links
• External hyperlinks
• Custom HTML insertion
• Imported HTML pages with local assets
Publish to WebHelp, CHM, and PDF
HelpEdit can export your documentation to several important help formats:
- WebHelp — a browser-based online help system with table of contents, topic pages, copied assets, project styling, and searchable content.
- CHM Help — generate classic Windows compiled HTML Help files for desktop applications.
- PDF Manual — export your project as a PDF manual using a generated HTML manual and Microsoft Edge's headless PDF printing.
Reusable Content, Variables, Snippets, and Conditions
HelpEdit includes reusable documentation features for maintaining consistent content across many topics. You can define variables, snippets, and conditions, then use them inside your help pages. Variables are useful for repeated product names, version numbers, company names, or standard text. Snippets let you reuse larger blocks of HTML content. Conditions allow selected parts of content to be included or removed during publishing.
Project Appearance and Styling
HelpEdit includes project-level settings for customizing the look of your documentation. You can configure the project title, default font, font size, text color, line spacing, page background color, header background color, table borders, link color, link style, and WebHelp footer text.
Download HelpEdit — Free for Windows | All Products