MATLAB®

Viewing Documentation in the Help Browser

About the Display Pane

After finding documentation with the Help Navigator, view the documentation in the display pane. The following illustration shows the Help Navigator closed to provide a larger area for viewing the information.

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Browse to Other Pages

Use the arrow buttons in the page and in the toolbar to go to other pages.

View the next page in a document by clicking the Next page button at the top or bottom of the page. View the previous page in a document by clicking the Previous page button at the top or bottom of the page. These arrows allow you to move forward or backward within a single document. The arrows at the bottom of the page are labeled with the title of the page they go to.

View the page previously shown by clicking the Back button in the display pane toolbar. After using the Back button, view the next page shown by clicking the Forward button in the display pane toolbar. These buttons work like the forward and back buttons of popular Web browsers. You can also go back or forward by right-clicking a page and selecting Back or Forward from the context menu.

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Links

Click links in the displayed page to go to a related topic for more information on the subject. Links appear underlined and in blue, while visited links appear in purple. Links to Web addresses open in the MATLAB^® Web Browser. Click the middle mouse button to open the linked page in a separate window.

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Find Text in Displayed Pages

To find a phrase in the currently displayed page,

1. Click the Find button . In the resulting Find dialog box, type the word or phrase you are looking for. You can type a partial word, for example, preference to find all occurrences of preference and preferences. Use the check boxes to specify options. Click Find Next.

   The search begins at the current cursor position and the page scrolls to the first occurrence of the phrase in the page and highlights it.

2. To find more occurrences in that page, click Find Next or Find Previous in the Find dialog box, or use the keyboard shortcuts F3 and Shift+F3.

   MATLAB beeps when a search for Find Next reaches the end of the page, or when a search for Find Previous reaches the top of the page. If you have Wrap around selected, it continues searching after beeping.

You can change the selection in the Look in field to search for the specified text in other MATLAB desktop tools.

See Search Documentation and Demos with the Help Browser for instructions on looking through all the documentation instead of just one page.

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Copy Information

To copy information from the display pane, such as code in an example, first select the information. Then right-click and select Copy from the context menu. You can then paste the information into another tool, such as the Command Window or Editor, or into another application, such as a word processing application.

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Evaluate a Selection

To run code examples that appear in the documentation, select the code in the display pane. Then right-click and select Evaluate Selection from the context menu. The statements execute in the Command Window.

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Open a Selection

In a page in the display pane, select the name of a file that is provided with MATLAB, such as an M-file. Then right-click and select Open Selection from the context menu. The file opens in MATLAB. For example, an M-file opens in the Editor.

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Get Help for a Selection

In a page in the display pane, select the name of a function that is provided with MATLAB. Then right-click and select Help on Selection from the context menu. The reference page for that function opens in the Help browser.

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View the Page Source (HTML)

To view the HTML source for the currently displayed page, select View > Page Source. A read-only HTML version of the page appears in a separate window. You can copy selections from the HTML source and paste them into other tools like the Editor or Command Window, or into other applications.

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View the Page Location

To view the location of the page currently displayed, select View > Page Location. The Help Page Location dialog box appears, providing the full path to the documentation file for both your local system and the MathWorks Web site.

You can copy the information from this window into an e-mail message or other tool to facilitate communication with other users or The MathWorks. For example, if you find a page of documentation that you know would be useful to a colleague running MATLAB, send them the link so they can view the page in the Help browser. Note that the docroot function used with the web function is unsupported, intended only for use by MathWorks™ products.

Click the Go button to view the same documentation page on The MathWorks Web site. This is useful if you do not see the information you are looking for on the page in view and know you are not running the most current version of MATLAB. The documentation for the most current version is on the Web site and might include more information than the documentation for your version. Note, though, that the documentation on the Web site might refer to features that are not part of your earlier-version product. See Accessing Documentation on the Web for more information.

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Finding Information with the Help Browser

Demos in the Help Browser