New offline books released for Visual Studio 2017

[mairaw]

Earlier this month, we released an update to Offline Books for the Visual Studio 2017 Help Viewer.

This release includes new .NET books, including .NET Core Guide, .NET Guide, .NET Framework Guide and the .NET API Reference. It also includes the latest content for Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5, the latest updates to Visual Basic, C# (7.1 and 7.2), F#, ASP.NET Core, NuGet, SQL Server, and the Universal Windows Platform.

The .NET Guide, .NET Framework Guide and .NET API Reference books together are a replacement for the .NET Framework 4.6 and 4.5 book, which can be removed. Just be aware that the new .NET API Reference book currently displays the API syntax block for C# only, but examples are shown in other languages, just like the experience you currently have on docs.microsoft.com.If you need to see the API syntax for Visual Basic, C++/CLI or F#, then you should keep the old book until the new reference book is updated again in a few weeks. Once you remove the .NET Framework 4.6 and 4.5 book, you cannot reinstall it.

Help Viewer Installation

You will see these new books when you have Help Viewer installed and choose Help > Add and Remove Content from the Visual Studio 2017 main menu. If you don't see this menu item, then open the Visual Studio Installer, click the More dropdown and choose Modify. When the component list appears, choose Individual Components at the top, then check Help Viewer.

Add and Remove Content

To start the installation, select the Modify button in the lower right corner of the Installer window.

To update individual books whose status is "Updates available", remove the book and then click Add to get the new version. To update all your books at once, select the link in the lower right corner of the Add and Remove Content window:

Call to action

Download and use the books and provide any feedback in the comments of this issue.

[shmuelie]

Can I download the books external to the help viewer?

[mairaw]

No @SamuelEnglard. The only option right now that is external to the help viewer are the PDF files on docs.microsoft.com .