The alternative to associating help strings with database fields is to define help strings as a part of field-level objects that contain the data. To attach a help string to a field-level object, use the HELP option of the Format phrase specified with the following ABL statements: DEFINE BROWSE, DEFINE TEMP-TABLE, DEFINE FRAME, ENABLE, FORM, PROMPT-FOR, SET, or UPDATE. The following code shows an example using the DEFINE FRAME statement:

DEFINE FRAME FRAME-A
   BUTTON-1 AT ROW 4 COL 12 HELP "Choose to cancel the operation and exit."
   WITH 1 DOWN NO-BOX OVERLAY SIDE-LABELS AT COL 1 ROW 1 SIZE 74 BY 11.

You can also use the HELP attribute to define help strings for field-level objects. For example, after the DEFINE FRAME statement, you can use the following code to change the help text for the button:

BUTTON-1:HELP = "This button cancels the operation and exits the window."

In ABL, the Format phrase HELP option and the HELP attribute let you define help strings for widgets not associated with database fields. Help strings defined with these options override any help strings specified for associated database fields in the Data Dictionary. For more information, see the Format Phrase and the HELP attribute reference entries in ABL Reference.