Help Screens on AS400

Help Screen is a common type of information screen in AS400. it gives Help information about almost any kind of display.

Suppose you were going to work with members using PDM (WRKMBRPDM) and were not sure what the parameter, “Member type” meant. you could place the cursor anywhere on the line for that parameter and then press the help key (F1). Then a window appears on the screen that contains information about Member type.

You can enlarge the help screen to fill up entire screen as seen on above figure by pressing function key F20 (SHIFT + F8).

To Cancel the help request and return to the previous screen press F12.

Extended Help

If you were looking at a field help window and wanted more information about the screen in general, you would press function key F2 for extended help. In our example pressing F2 from the “Member type” help would give you general information about the WRKMBRPDM command. this extended help would then list and describe all the command’s parameters, as well as their possible values.

The AS400 supports thousands of Help screens, and you should not hesitate to use them when you have a question about how a certain screen can be used or about what the possibilities are for responding to a prompt.