IntelliJ IDEA provides a number of features that will help you obtain the necessary information. These features include:

Using Help Topics

The contents of the built-in documentation is divided into the following major parts:

Getting Started
The Getting Started part contains basic information about the user interface and explains how to configure your working environment, find your way though and master the initial steps with IntelliJ IDEA.
Concepts
The Concepts part contains information about the notions that underlie the IntelliJ IDEA functionality.
Procedures
The Procedures part provides descriptions of the actions required to fulfil certain tasks with IntelliJ IDEA. Note that the Procedures part page contains an alphabetical index of all the available task descriptions.
Reference
In the Reference part you can find descriptions of the tool windows, dialog controls, lists of the keyboard shortcuts, information related to specific version control systems etc.

Built-in documentation enables you to browse through the topics using the table of contents, find occurrences in the Search tab, or use the detailed Index that contains all keywords from all topics.

To bring up help contents, do one one the following
  • On the main menu, choose Help | Help Topics.
  • Press F1F1.
  • Click Help button, if it is available.
To find a particular piece of information
  1. Click the Search tab of the help viewer.
  2. In the search field, type the search string and press EnterEnter.
  3. In the list of topics that contain occurrences of the search string, select the desired one. Occurrences are highlighted in the right pane of the help viewer.
To find a keyword in the Index tab
  1. Click the Index tab of the help viewer.
  2. In the search field, type the desired keyword and press EnterEnter. The caret rests at the first occurrence of the keyword. Every time you press EnterEnter, the caret moves to the next occurrence of the keyword. To see the information about a keyword, select one of its sub-entries.

Using Tips of the Day

Tips of the Day provide a collection of useful and interesting hints. They show up every time you start IntelliJ IDEA. If you want to suppress Tips of the Day, clear the check box Show Tips on Startup.

To show a tip of the day, choose Help | Tip of the Day on the main menu. To navigate through the collection of tips, use the Previous and Next buttons.

Using the Productivity Guide

IntelliJ IDEA smartly analyzes the features you use most often during your development sessions, and reminds you of the features you might have missed. Actually, the Productivity Guide is your personal adviser that helps you fulfil your tasks in the most efficient way.

The Productivity Guide automatically displays a Tips of the Day window, with the features personally recommended to a particular user, during compilation and other time-consuming operations, such as repository updates, downloads etc.

To view your productivity statistics and enable or disable display of the Productivity Guide
  1. On the main menu, choose Help | Productivity Guide. The Productivity Guide dialog appears.
  2. Select or clear the show check boxes to define when the personalized Tips of the Day should display.

Using Online Resources

If built-in documentation fails to answer your questions, you can find more information on the web. The following resources are available:

The easiest way to share your feedback:

See Also

Web Resources: