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お役に立てれば幸いです.

Great - many thanks ccpan!

Posted By: ccpan

[p]お役に立てれば幸いです.[/p]

It should be noted that this isn't actually a translation of the wanted line.

お役に立てれば幸いです. means "I hope this can help you", so it's in a future tense where as "I hope this helped you" is in a past tense.

The "perfect" translation would be お役に立ったなら幸いです。- "I'm happy if this helped you".

Hmm, I think it is OK to say お役に立てれば幸いです in this situation, which means I am always pleased to help you.
お役に立ったなら幸いです may be grammatically correct but it seems uncommon. Searching the google for お役に立てれば would get a lot of examples, but they are rare for お役に立ったなら. And as far as I know, the "past tense" たis not exactly the same as the past tense in English.

Posted By: ccpan

[p]Hmm, I think it is OK to say お役に立てれば幸いです in this situation, which means I am always pleased to help you.

お役に立ったなら幸いです may be grammatically correct but it seems uncommon. Searching the google for お役に立てれば would get a lot of examples, but they are rare for お役に立ったなら. And as far as I know, the "past tense" たis not exactly the same as the past tense in English.[/p]

Well, the point is that if you borrowed someone something or helped someone and later want to tell them "I hope it helped you", お役に立てれば幸いです is incorrect since it's talking about the future.

"I'm happy if it will be of help to you."
"Um.... thank you, but I already used it, you can already have it back..."

Where as お役に立ったなら幸いです specifically means "I'm happy if it was of help to you".

I found 2 good examples in the Sentence section of Jisho.

あなたのお手伝いができてうれしい。 We are glad to help you.
先週あなたのお手伝いができてうれしく思います。 I am glad to have helped you last week.

The second one is specific for what was done in the past, although there is no conspicuous past tense in the sentence aside from the adverb先週.

I made some research about the topic and found the following discussion quite interesting:

http://thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=11669&sid=7553fb07178cc6c6e8cb912524ba0587&start=30

It shows that some Japanese people do not even understand the meaning of "I hope that helped". For example, one guy said "すでに終わったこと（過去形）をこれから望む（hope未来のこと？）というのがどうも納得がいきません。" (I cannot understand how I hope from the time being (hope for future?) for what was done in the past). In his mind, one cannot “hope” (present tense) for what was done (past tense). It shows that what is natural in one language may be unnatural in another language.

I admit that I always use present tense in these situations, such like 御参考になれば幸いです or いくらかでもお役に立てれば幸いです. Next time I surely will pay more attention to the テンスissue.