Getting Help for the ESDA tools and the Geostatistical wizard

There are many ways to get help for a topic or process in ArcGIS. For an overview of the ArcGIS Help system, refer to Welcome to the ArcGIS Help Library.

Additionally, the Geostatistical Analyst Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) tools and the Geostatistical wizard offer context-sensitive help, which allows you to quickly find definitions and some guidance while using the tools. Context-sensitive help within the Geostatistical wizard also contains direct links to more extensive documentation housed within the main ArcGIS Help system.

Context-sensitive help for the ESDA tools

To get help for a specific component of the ESDA tools, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Question Mark button Qu'est-ce que c'est ? on the top right-hand side of the window. The pointer changes to an arrow with a question mark beside it.
  2. Click the element of the window that you need help with. This could be a box to enter a value, parameter name, tab, button, or any graphic component.

A window showing help for the item you clicked opens. The figure below shows context-sensitive help that was obtained by clicking the graph in the ESDA Histogram tool. The help explains what a histogram represents, how it is generated, and how the summary statistics shown in the upper right corner are calculated.

ESDA Histogram with Context Sensitive Help.

Context-sensitive help for the Geostatistical Wizard

To get help for a specific parameter within the Geostatistical Wizard, do the following:

  1. Click the parameter name so that it is highlighted.
  2. If available, click the hyperlink to get more detailed information on the topic.

The context-sensitive help appears in a resizable window at the bottom right-hand corner of the wizard's interface.

The next figure shows the context-sensitive help for one of the steps in the Geostatistical Wizard. In this case, it is the step where the parameter values for Inverse Distance Weighting are defined. The context-sensitive help shown in the highlighted window describes the Power parameter and explains how the power value you choose affects the weights given to the points in the interpolation process.

IDW page showing Context Sensitive help.

Clicking the More hyperlink opens a specific page in the ArcGIS Help system that describes the parameter and process it relates to in more depth. This is shown in the following figure.

Link to an extended explanation of the parameter in the help system

Context-sensitive help is intended to offer definitions and some guidance while you are using the tools. Concepts, in-depth help, and tutorials can be found in the ArcGIS Desktop Help system by searching for the topic of interest.


7/10/2012