OpenOffice and Paper Clips
The paper clip Office Assistant is the stalwart animated helper in most versions of Microsoft Word. A switch to the open source OpenOffice suite may leave some users pining for that good old animated paper clip and the helpful tips that popped up alongside it. OpenOffice has its own version -- Help Agent -- which is a little light bulb that does the same job as Microsoft's paper clip.
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Function
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Animated office assistants and help agents are user-friendly pop-up windows that display tips and formatting advice while you type. You can choose to read and follow the advice or click away from the pop-up to ignore it. For example, if you begin typing a letter, the Help Agent light bulb will pop up and ask if you want help formatting your letter.
Settings
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In versions 1 and 2, you can turn the OpenOffice Help Agent on or off by going to the "Tools" menu, and then selecting "Options," "OpenOffice.org" and "General." In the box labeled "Help Agent," you click it to activate the agent or uncheck it to make the pop-ups stop.
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Bad Agents
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According to the official OpenOffice.org Wiki, the typical word-processing user closes or ignores Help Agent suggestions when they appear on screen. In fact, some users were so annoyed by animated paper clips, light bulbs and popup windows in general that a "request for enhancement" was made to remove the Help Agent entirely. The feature is conspicuously missing from OpenOffice version 3; to see it, you must run an earlier versions of the software.
Automatic Disabling
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Even if you turn on Help Agent, OpenOffice automatically disables the feature if you ignore it three times for a given event. For example, failing to acknowledge a capitalization tip three times will disable the Help Agent, but ignoring three different kinds of tips won't. To reset Help Agent after it's been automatically disabled, you need to go back to "Tools," "Options," "OpenOffice.org" and "General," and then click the button labeled "Reset Help Agent."
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