
In that case, this guide will help you find multiple freeware that let you read CHM documents on your PC. So, if you want to read a CHM file, you need a special application that supports the file format.

Now, there are not many free software that allow you to view files with the CHM extension. It is basically used for help documentation and may consist of text, images, and hyperlinks. CHM which stands for Compiled HTML file format is a document format that contains HTML documents, images, Java scripts, and more in compressed form. These free software and online services allow you to open and view CHM documents. chm documentation.Here is a list of the best free CHM file reader software and online tools. A great format for this situation is CHM because your TOC, hyperlinks and other doc structure elements will be imported successfully.Īs this format is offline, how can you keep updated? Well, here I describe how I can do it using an online documentation tool but if you use something else, please, share your experience in the comments section, so we’ll gather more information here for technical writers. Here is another example, you migrate from a help authoring tool, and you need to import your documentation to another one. For example, you work remotely and there is no internet connection but you need a user manual, so you can just download CHM and continue working. This is the area where the format really shines. CHM and Technical WritingĬHM is the format that’s mostly used for software documentation. Although this format was introduced by Microsoft, it’s now supported in many document viewer applications. It was introduced as the successor to Microsoft WinHelp with the release of Windows 98 and is still supported in Windows 7. chm files are ‘help’ files, consisting of HTML pages that include an index, images and a table of contents with hyperlinks to all pages. CHM is really known as Microsoft Compiled HTML Help.
