How to Get Help Within Roam Research

Ramses Oudt
Ramses Oudt
How to Get Help Within Roam Research

One of the goals of RoamStack is to provide you with all the answers to your Roam-related questions. But sometimes you run into something small, or Google doesn't give you any helpful answer. So, where do you go to?

In this article I'll show some of the ways that you can get help right from within the Roam app. In case you need personalized help or someone who can build with you, consider joining RoamStack as a paying member.

We'll cover two main ways to get help in Roam.

  • Roam Help: tutorials, shortcuts, and direct access to Roam support.
  • Roam42: more tutorials and more extensive shortcuts documentation.

Roam Help

The easiest way to get quick help in Roam is by clicking the ? button in the top menu bar:

In it, you'll find the Roam Help interface, containing tutorials, shortcuts, and direct access to Roam's support team:

The getting started videos are short clips about basic functionality like links, references, filters, tasks, and moving notes. They're aimed at beginners.

The rest of the Roam Help is dedicated to the keyboard shortcuts that ship with Roam. They adjust to your operating system; so, on Mac you'd see mention of Cmd and Option whereas Windows users will see Ctrl and Alt mentioned.

Last but not least, if you're completely stuck or run into a bug in Roam, click the Send Us a Message button to open a help chat with the Roam support team within the app.

But what if you can't find the answer to your question, or you want to do something that doesn't seem possible with Roam? Then you need Roam42!

Roam42

The Roam42 extension is a collection of tools maintained by third party developer David Vargas. Head over to the official Roam42 to download it. Need some help installing a Roam extension? Click here for the tutorial I've written.

Once you've installed Roam42, an additional button appears in the top menu:

Upon clicking the Roam42 button, the following dropdown appears:

The Help and Tutorials option will be the ones you'll probably be using most. As you'll see, the repository of tutorials is much bigger than Roam's and also dives into Roam42 and SmartBlock-specific workflows.

Roam42's help popup is also much more extensive than the one that ships natively with Roam, containing all of Roam's native keyboard shortcuts and shortcodes. You'll also find information about Roam42's functionality (including the SmartBlocks templating language).

Need more help? Join RoamStack!

If you need more help wrapping your head around the possibilities of Roam Research, or if you need experts that can help you build your workflows, consider joining RoamStack.

We're a group of more than 200 power users, always looking to teach and learn from each other. Start by signing up for the free newsletter below.



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