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Hi @JeffM.22!
I’m not sure what song/exercise this particular chord is in, so there may be a good reason they don’t want you to play the 5th string (or 1st string) at all, but the open 5th string being an “A”, makes it a very correct note in the Dmajor chord.
Dmajor is D-F#-A
D/F# is just the first inversion of the Dmajor chord F#-D-A
So the way Hal wants you to play it is 2x023x which is F#-D-A-D
If you play Dmajor the usual way and wrap your thumb around to hit the F# on the low E string 2nd fret, you could strum all 6 strings and you’d have
F#-A-D-A-D-F#
This is still a D/F#, much easier to fret and you can strum all 6 strings, they are all notes in the Dmajor and it’s still a D/F# chord.
Not sure if this is helpful, like I said, I don’t know what song/exercise the example came from. I know context is everything 🙂