How to Hide, Unhide, and Use the Office Assistant Paper Clip in Word 2003

Introduction

That paper clip with the googly eyes in your Word document is the animated Help feature to give you quick access to guidance. He’s particularly useful when performing a grammar check. You can hide the feisty fellow or change it to another action character. And you can choose from some pretty cute characters! Options are shown in the video. Read on to learn how to use the animated Office Assistant as well as how to hide it, unhide it, and change the character.

By: SeventhSibling

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Instructions

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Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Tips & Warnings:

Types of Help. On the Search Results task pane, you’ll notice a small icon next to line of help. You can hover your mouse pointer over each icon to read what type of help the link offers. The question mark in a circle means that is a help tip from Microsoft online. The computer monitor with the red-shirted viewer indicates that link is to online training (yep, a FREE mini-course!). The Word icon takes you to a template online. The question mark in a square means that link goes to an article. And the globe with the Office logo indicates the link is to a webpage of Microsoft Office.

Step1

Show Office Assistant If you don’t see the animated Office Assistant and want to know what this article is about, with Word open, click on Help in the top menu bar and then click on “Show the Office Assistant” from the drop down menu. The default setting is for a paper clip guy to appear. This smiling guy is there to help you with questions about using Word and to give you tips.

Step2

Help Results When you become stumped on how to perform a Word task, simply click on the paper clip and then type in your question, e.g., “How to create a footnote.” After you click on the Search button, the Search Results task pane (depicted to the left) will display where you can learn how to perform the needed function by clicking on the desired result. See the Tips box on this page for an explanation of the types of help that are available through this task pane.

Step3

Gallery Tab Back to the paper clip, you can replace the paper clip with a different action icon. Do that by first clicking on the paper click, then click on the Options button and that will produce the Office Assistant dialogue box. Click on the Gallery tab.

Step4

Puppy Character From the Gallery tab, you can click the Next button to view the available icons for the Office Assistant. Each has its own charm; however the puppy is particularly amazing. Try him out in Word and watch his antics. NOTE: Once you display the Office Assistant in Word, the assistant will also display in other Office 2003 software installed on your computer.

Step5

Options Tab On the Options tab of the Office Assistant, the boxes that are checked are default settings. The unchecked boxes give you the option to choose to have the assistant available to “Help with wizards.”

Step6

Light Bulb Results Also on the Options tab, under “Show tips about,” you can click the boxes to add additional assistance. For instance, with “Using features more effectively” checked, you may see a light bulb appear over the office assistant after you perform a task, like after using the menus to create a bullet list. By clicking on the light bulb, you can read a tip on how to perform the same task you just completed but in a different fashion.

Step7

Hide Office Assistant If the animated Office Assistant is no longer desired, simply return to the Help menu and click on “Hide the Office Assistant.” You can always unhide the assistant later should you desire help.

Comments

SeventhSibling said

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on 5/12/2008 Hello phatazz,

Good question! Immediately over Step 1 in the above instructions, there's a bar with the word "Instructions". To the right of that if you click on "Print Article", this article will appear on a page by itself, without the video. From there, if you are using Internet Explorer, you can click on File in the top menu bar, then click on Send from the drop down menu, and lastly, click on Shortcut to Desktop.