Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2004 | Microsoft Word 2004 | Microsoft Excel 2004 | Microsoft PowerPoint 2004

Microsoft Office Assistant

Microsoft Office 2004 comes with an animated character standing in a box in the lower right corner of your screen (by default). This document will use Word as the example application, but the Assistant is available to help you in all three areas of Office 2004: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and functions identically in each application.

You may do any of the following to use the Assistant:

Click once on the Office Assistant.
If you have a HELP key on your keyboard, press that key.
Hold down the COMMAND (OPEN APPLE) key and press the QUESTION MARK key (?).
Press the ? button in the Toolbar.

The Assistant displays a query window above him.

Click once in the text box.
Type the topic your interested in (e.g. spell checking).
Click once on the SEARCH button in the query window, or press the ENTER or RETURN key.
The Assistant offers a bulleted list of possible solutions to your problem. Click once on the bullet of your choice (or on its text) and another window called MICROSOFT OFFICE HELP appears with more detailed information.

Tips

The Assistant has a tip

You may ask yourself, what the little light bulb that appears in the Assistant's window is for. The light-bulb appears when the Assistant has a tip for you. Click on the light-bulb and the Assistant will offer you help. (You may turn this off in the OFFICE ASSISTANT window -- see below).

Turning the Assistant on and off

The Assistant is present unless you hide it. Hide it by either closing his window or by holding down the CONTROL key and single-clicking in his window. Select TURN THE OFFICE ASSISTANT OFF from the contextual menu that appears. Hiding it and quitting the application will cause the Assistant to be hidden the next time you launch the program. Bring the Assistant back by going to the HELP menu and selecting USE THE OFFICE ASSISTANT.

Customizing your Office Assistant

You may customize the Assistant to better suit your computing behavior.

Click once on the Assistant to bring up the query window, and then click on the OPTIONS button at the bottom of the window (or hold down CONTROL, click once in the Assistant's window, then select OPTIONS). A window appears, entitled OFFICE ASSISTANT. Check or uncheck your desired options to modify such things as the Assistant's behavior (sound, position, guessing, etc.), and options about what tips to show.

Written by Matthew Dull '01; Updated by Francis Charles Koczur III '07