Windows 10 API offline documentation [closed]

Question

It's my understanding that Windows API (C functions and COM) documentation is no longer available for offline browsing. For example, the Windows 10 SDK doesn't seem to contain any documentation, as well as Visual Studio 2015.

This answer provides guidance for obtaining documentation for older versions of the Windows API, but what about the latest stuff? If Windows 10 documentation is not available for download, which is the latest available?

Integration with Visual Studio would be welcome, but also a standalone .chm would be nice.

Answer 1

The offline documentation for the Windows API is not available as a separate download. Instead, you have to use the Help Viewer that's installed as part of Visual Studio.

To download the offline help from Visual Studio 2015, follow these steps:

• Select Help -> Set Help Preference -> Launch in Help Viewer
• Select Help -> View Help: After this, Microsoft Help Viewer 2.2 starts up.
• Select Manage Content: This is opened as the default tab on first launch. Alternatively use the toolbar button, or Ctrl+Shift+M.
• Pick the documentation you wish to install as offline content. For Windows API programming you need Windows Desktop App Development.
• Click the Update button. The documentation will download and merge into the existing offline help.¹⁾

Note: The offline documentation appears to be incomplete. While this was partially fixed previously (see "Windows Desktop App Development" book missing from downloadable local documentation), it seems that certain content is still not available (see Some topics are missing from downloadable offline help). If this is an issue for you as well, consider voting on the respective Connect report.

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¹⁾ Updating the help failed for me several times with an error message, suggesting that I should perform the update from the user account from which I installed Visual Studio, even though that was, what I was doing. Logging into the local administrator account, I was able to update the help files.