Help browser and academic license

I'm a researcher at a Norwegian University where we have a Matlab R2018a academic site license.

I can use Matlab to work without any issue from my University computer, but I cannot access the help browser or to the documentation of any function from inside Matlab. Anytime I try to do it, I'm redirected to the license server site, where it says thet I'm not associated to a license or a trial. How can I do to be able to open the help browser so I don't have to copy the function and to do the search manually in the web browser anytime I want to check something?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Open your preferences in matlab. Under Help, change the documentation location from web to installed locally. Of course, if the documentation is not installed locally it's not going to work either. If so, complain to your administrator.

[Federico Cova]

Thanks a lot, I changed the settings and it worked.

I still think that it is absurd that I can access to the help in chrome but I cannot do it from the matlab browser, it doesn't make any sense to me.

Answer 2

[Cris LaPierre]

That's odd. Documenation is not restricted. Anyone can browse the internet to find it. It sounds like you might have an install issue. Consult with your school's IT to verify that you have correctly installed MATLAB and associated it to your school's license/your MathWorks account.

If you still have issues, try looking through the install help here.

[Guillaume]

"Documenation is not restricted"

That's not exactly true unfortunately. The unversioned documentation can be accessed by anybody (e.g. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/sum.html). However, the versioned documentation (e.g. https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2018b/matlab/ref/sum.html) is indeed restricted to mathworks accounts with a valid license. And since the built-in help links to the versioned documentation, I'm not surprised somebody (e.g. students) not associated wih a valid license would see the message described.

It's a royal pain as well. On Answers, everytime I paste a link to the documentation from my help browser, I have to remove the /release/R20xxx bit from the hyperlink to make sure it is accessible by the person I answer to.

[Sean de Wolski]

Guillaume, I agree having to delete the /release/etc is a pain and I have to do it frequently also. I'll put an enhancement request in for that to be a third option in the help context menu.

[Cris LaPierre]

I guess I prefer to browse the internet, so haven't encountered that issue. Learn something every day! Thanks.

[Guillaume]

@Sean, that would be great.

Another option would be to have a way to directly insert (unversioned) links to the documentation in the Answer's editor. I'm not sure exactly how it would work but I'll suggest it to the Answer team.