# Assign a Topic to a Parent Control

## Content



There may be times you need to attach a topic not to a control you can select, but to its parent or ancestor. Since the parent can be completely covered by child controls and thus unselectable, there is a special provision to do it in authoring mode.

1.  Activate **authoring mode** using the method specified by the software developer. The authoring mode panel appears.
2.  Click the **Select control** button ![](https://cdn.mescius.io/document-site-files/images/3b487bec-9ad4-47e0-ad8d-39717dc3c4e1/imagesext/image12_5.png).
3.  Click the child control of the parent or ancestor control you would like to map a Help topic to.
4.  Click the drop-down arrow in the **Control** combo box and select the parent or ancestor to map to.<br />![](https://cdn.mescius.io/document-site-files/images/3b487bec-9ad4-47e0-ad8d-39717dc3c4e1/imagesext/image12_9.png)
5.  Click the **Attach topic to control** button ![](https://cdn.mescius.io/document-site-files/images/3b487bec-9ad4-47e0-ad8d-39717dc3c4e1/imagesext/image12_6.png). The **Select Help Topic** dialog box appears and shows the **Table of Contents** tab and TOC from the source Help file.
6.  Select the topic from the **Table of Contents** tab or select the context ID/Topic pairing on the **Context IDs** tab, and specify any desired events.
7.  Click the **Save** button ![](https://cdn.mescius.io/document-site-files/images/3b487bec-9ad4-47e0-ad8d-39717dc3c4e1/imagesext/image12_7.png).
8.  Close the mapping window and deliver the proper Help and **.xml** mapping file to the software developer.