download windows API reference (MSDN) for offline use

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I would like to have a windows API reference document available offline. MSDN is fine, but I also need this kind of information when I don't have access to internet. pdf, chm, help (for emacs) would be fine. Surely I am not the first person to want that, but I can't find anything. Could someone please point to a place to find that? I saw the reference was maybe available in the SDK, but installing it takes ~200 MB, and I only want the documentation.

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5 Answers 5

Edit: Dead link replaced with alternate download.

Although it is now 17 years old, the Win32.hlp file from Microsoft is still a useful reference for those, like me, still programming using the "flat" Windows API. It still covers 99% of what I need and is much more convenient and faster to use than the current MSDN and Windows SDK documentation because it is much smaller. It is a file that is possible to add to the help menu of your IDE or favorite editor and call up instantly, even offline.

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Visual Studio 2012/2013/2015 Help Downloader

Tool for downloading the Visual Studio 2012/2013/2015 help packages for offline use

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I think it would be clearer if you explicitly identified the link to this tool (Visual Studio 2010 Help Downloader) -- as it is, I mistook it as just the title to your post.

Commented Feb 6, 2012 at 20:00 This is no longer needed; just use Microsoft Help Viewer from within Visual Studio. Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 16:12 community wiki

In Visual Studio, "Help > Manage Help Settings" you can download the contents to disk. Then you can press F1 to view them.

This feature is even available in Visual Studio Express. You can start the help server manually at %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Help Viewer\v1.0

Installing the Windows SDK and the .NET 4 help contents took ~700MB for me. There's probably no way around it.

(Windows SDKs used to contain the documentation but it seems like they've stripped it out in v7.1)

You can even do a search offline in the Help, though from my experience the relevant rate is worse than Google.

Edit: The "Microsoft Help System" is also available in the SDK so you don't need to install Visual Studio to use it