Office Assistant
intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office that assisted users by way of an interactive animated character
The Microsoft Office Assistant is a discontinued virtual assistant for Microsoft Office. It assisted users by way of an interactive animated character which interfaced with the Office help content. It was included in Microsoft Office, in Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft FrontPage. It had a wide selection of characters to choose from, with the most well-known being a paperclip called Clippit (commonly referred to by the public as Clippy). The Office Assistant and particularly Clippit have been the subject of numerous criticisms and parodies.
Description
The Office Assistant was an intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office. It assisted users by way of an interactive animated character that interfaced with the Office help content. It was included in Microsoft Office for Windows (versions 97 to 2003), in Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Project (versions 98 to 2003), Microsoft FrontPage (versions 2002 and 2003), and Microsoft Office for Mac (versions 98 to 2004).
The default assistant in the English version was named Clippit, after a paperclip. The character was designed by Kevan J. Atteberry.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Office Assistant” is intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office that assisted users by way of an interactive animated character. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Office, Assistant and intelligent, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Office Assistant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.