Now you can decide when to use it and when to turn it off

For Office 2000, we've responded to your requests and made some significant improvements to the Office Assistant. One key change is that the assistant has been removed from its window and is now just floating on top of your documents as you work.

The Office Assistant still does what it has always done - shows you how to use Office 2000 more efficiently and provides you with access to Help for each Office 2000 program. But now, if you don't want to use the assistant, you can turn it off and get it out of your way completely.

Turn the Office Assistant off or on temporarily

While you are working in your program, you can temporarily hide or show the Office Assistant by pointing to the Help menu and then clicking either Hide the Office Assistant or Show the Office Assistant.

Turn the Office Assistant off completely

In addition to temporarily disabling the Office Assistant, you can now turn it off completely — without uninstalling it. With Office 2000, a new command has been added to the Office Assistant options.

To turn off the Office Assistant

1. Make sure the Office Assistant is displayed.
2. Click the assistant to display the Office Assistant balloon.
3. Click Options.
4. On the Options tab, clear the Use the Office Assistant check box.

When you close the dialog box, the Office Assistant goes away.

If you want to turn the Office Assistant back on, follow the same procedure and select the Use the Office Assistant check box.

To get help when the Assistant is off

If you click Microsoft Help for the program on the Help menu and the Office Assistant is disabled, Help for the program is displayed in its own window. To locate Help topics, peruse the Contents tab, ask a question with the Answer Wizard tab, or search Help by using the Index tab.

 Note   Need to print a Help topic you are reading? Simply click the Print button in the Help window.

More information

In addition to turning off the Office Assistant in Office 2000, you can customize the assistant to help you get the most out of Office Help.