My upgrade from 8.5 has caused me to lose all my startup tips and F1 help files. How do I link them back up?

I have the same complaint.  I've "Upgraded" from Home Studio 4 to X2 Studio.  Now trying to get help sends me to the online help, which is not all that helpful.  I haven't found a good way to search for a specific phrase or word in the online help.  For instance, I wanted to hit F1 and type in a search term: "subgroup".  Well, I couldn't find a way to do that!  Is there a way?  Or I see in the Inspector Panel a group of controls labeled "snap to scale", "arpeggeator", etc.  I'm at a loss to find help on this.

I hope I'm just doing something stupid and someone can straighten me out on this.  I had reservations of upgrading to X2 because I found my experience in going from the original Cakewalk running under windows 95, to Home Studio to be 1) very confusing. and 2) not all that better for my use.  These developers seem to be great at creating wiz-bang modules and interfaces, but very lacking in providing appropriate help documentation.

You can force SONAR to use the help file on your machine by going to Edit>Preferences>File>Advanced and checking "Always Use Offline Help"

There is also a pdf version available http://www.cakewalk.com/S...reader.aspx/2007013290

This thread http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=2694430 has links to some quick reference guides.

There is offline documentation available through the Cakewalk folder that by default is added to the start menu.

What I find workable for myself is to use the online doc, but to search for something I go to the index and then hit CTRL+F and enter search text.  Then I use the results arrows to cruise through results until I find a link that looks likely to help.

Bob Bone

I'm having problems with the F1 Help, too, but not for the main program.  After moving to X2, and reinstalling DimPro and Rapture (which, it turns out, was probably not necessary), F1 didn't work in either synth.  I searched my computer for ".chrm" extensions and found the help files.  For Rapture, putting a copy of the help file into the directory with the program did the trick, and it works now.  But that idea didn't work for DimPro.  So I emailed tech support, and got a non-helpful response that basically told me they hadn't actually read my message.  I didn't feel like wasting any more of my time with them, so, for now, my solution is a desktop shortcut to the DimPro help file.

I tested F1 with some of the other synths and it seemed to work for most of them, but just yesterday I noticed that it was broken in another one - I forgot exactly which one, but I think it might have been Cyclone.

Thanks to scook and Bob Bone for their helpful replies.
But I'm still a little confused:  So I go to online help and hit Ctrl+F to search.
But don't I have to know what module to search in first?
I'm not sure whether I should be at What's New, Getting Started, Sonar Online, Audio, MIDI, etc., etc.
Is there a place with an index of everything?
Or is that the local Sonar_X2_Reference_Guide.pdf ?
When I set  my preferences to go to local help, I have a similar problem, I have to pick a category before I get to do a search.
Will any category do here, and I'll get the same index to search?
 

All the help files have indices. I use the pdf mostly. The pdf index is at the bottom of the file. The online has a link to the index at the top of the page along with the table of content and page forward and backward links. The offline help has an index tab in additional to all the standard MS help search stuff.

The advantage to the online help is that it get updated.