Cathy,

Can anybody point me in the right direction in finding information in
creating customized help files, particular html help (chm) files.

This page may help you to get started:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/basics.htm

The most detailed tutorial on how to use HTML Help Workshop,
Microsoft's free authoring tool, is at:

http://www.mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/h....html#char_hhw

And the largest collection of links to Help-related resources is at:

http://mshelpwiki.com/index.php

--
Pete (Microsoft Help MVP)