Suggestions for reporting and help file creation

Hi,

I know this topic has come up in the past but I want fresh opinions (and I haven't been able to visit the forum much lately). I plan to search the forum too to see what's been said in the past.

The organization I work for is looking for a reporting tool and a help file creation tool to use with VB development. We currently have Crystal Reports and RoboHelp Office but both of these products are (extremely) expensive and due to budget constraints we need to find something that costs less while still offering decent features and functionality. For the reporting software we'd ideally like something that can work with the web (create web-based reports). For the help creation software we'd ideally like something that can do stand-alone and HTML help.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Paul

My favorite help program is VBHelpwriter. I can't remember if it does HTML files though....

Check it out at www.vbhelpwriter.com

Hi,

For writing help files, I use Document!X from Innovasys (http://www.innovasys.co.uk)

It isn't free (about $200? ish) but it is miles ahead of the free component help thing I was using. It works by allowing you to define special comment tags in the VB source code and then it generates the help by extracting those comments and creating the appropriate object model etc.

I posted the blank template I created with it on this site.