Documentation structure
Both built-in and online PyCharm documentation have similar structure, which is outlined below:
- Getting Started
-
- The parts Guided Tour around the PyCharm User Interface and Tool Windows contain essential information about the user interface.
- The part Familiarize Yourself with PyCharm Editor helps you master the PyCharm editor, and describes the basic and advanced editing procedures.
- Besides that, you can find information on PyCharm registration, most essential keyboard shortcuts, navigation facilities, and more.
- Basic concepts
- The Basic concepts part contains information about the notions that underlie the PyCharm functionality.
- Product Usage Guidelines
- The PyCharm Usage Guidelines part provides descriptions of the actions required to fulfil certain common tasks with PyCharm. Note that the part page contains an alphabetical index of all the available task descriptions.
- Language and Framework-Specific Guidelines
- The Language and Framework-Specific Guidelines part provides important prerequisites, enabling procedures, meta procedures of working with the various frameworks, and gives some details for performing specific tasks.
- 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.
Using built-in documentation
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.
- On the main menu, choose .
- Press F1F1.
- Click Help button, if it is available.
- Click the Search tab of the help viewer.
- In the search field, type the search string and press EnterEnter.
- 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.
- Click the Index tab of the help viewer.
- 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.
Online documentation
On the PyCharm site, you can find online version of the PyCharm's built-in documentation:
The online version enables you to print out pages, find pieces of information, using the Search pane, browse the documentation with the table of contents, rate topics, ask question and express your opinion. It consists of three panes:
- Contents pane
-
This pane shows the table of contents.
- Use this pane to browse through the topics.
- Click the chevron buttons
and 
to show or hide this pane. - If for some reason your browser fails to show actual table of contents, click the Refresh Tree button on top of the pane.
- Topic pane
- This pane shows topics, selected in the table of contents.
- The Previous and Next links help navigate across the topics of the same level.
- The link See also is enabled, when the corresponding section is not empty.
- The link Comments brings you to the Comments section, where you can view the existing comments and add you own ones.
- In the Shortcuts drop-down list, choose the platform you want to view keyboard shortcuts in (Windows/Linux, or MacOS).
- Search pane
-
- This pane is hidden by default. Click the chevron buttons and
to show or hide this pane.
- This pane is hidden by default. Click the chevron buttons
- Open the desired page of the online documentation.
- Click the link Get printable
.
Note
The Search pane is hidden by default, for the sake of providing more space.
To perform search, you have click the chevron button
at the right edge of your browser, to reveal the Search pane.
- In the Search field, type your query.
- Press EnterEnter.
- Click the desired entry in the search results pane. The corresponding page will open in the central pane, and will be highlighted in the Table of Contents pane.