Who remember MS Office assistant?

[marceg16579]

MS Office assistant was cat, dog, ball, paper clip, Einstein, and other...

In which version are appeared for the first time? Office 97 or 2000? Which one you liked most?

[user99672]

They did all have names Rover for instance was used in Microsoft Bob, Office and Windows XP. The characters (when using a Windows version) used the Microsoft Agent API, which was....exploited often enough (cough BonziBuddy).

[Courage]

Clippy was the classic assistant, though. Everyone who used Office in the 90s/early 2000s probably still remembers the infernal paperclip.

[ovctvct]

It appeared in office 97, IIRC, but it looked differently back then, it used MS BOB instead of MS Agent.

[user99672]

It appeared in office 97, IIRC, but it looked differently back then, it used MS BOB instead of MS Agent.

I really don't think that's correct...

[Windows OS]

I really don't think that's correct...

I think he meant by the fact that Agent was a evolution of the interactive character technology used in Bob (then internally called Microsoft Actor), with Office 97 using a modified version of Bob's Actor, before introducing Agent with Office 2000.

[haroldas.velioniskis]

Oh, I remember Clippy, it was the most annoying thing back in 1997

[meagain]

I've had clippy.exe, a joke program, floating around my school network. You give it a text file and it says stuff - clippy on your desktop!

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

[pool7]

In which version are appeared for the first time? Office 97 or 2000? Which one you liked most?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant, they appeared with Office 97, and were removed in Office 2007.
I hated them all.

[after64k]

Ah... but does anyone remember Max? He was my all-time favorite.

(For the others I remember from those days, there was Clippy, F1, Courtney, Merlin, Mother Earth, the Puzzle (or something like that), and of course, Rover). I think there was also another dog and a cat? I forget their names.

[cosmonavt]

Well I remember MS Office assistant in Office 97. Also, I remember how disappointed it was when I tried to change the assistant from the default Clippy to someone else and it asked me for the Office installation disk to install the assistant, which I had lost somewhere when I moved to another city.

The hard drive I had at that point was only 6 GB's, so yes, Office assistants were the last priority for the installer As nostalgic as it can make me.

[skinumeric]

I remember them from Word 97. I found an old drive with setup files for "Dolphin" and "Earl Cat" assistants. Assuming they aren't corrupt from being sitting in storage for so long...

Edit: Even better, here's the original site with Word 97 assistants!
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815195 ... ldWord.asp

[sdawncl]

Hi. It also reminds of Mindmaker's Prody Parrot which came bundled with my first sound card, Creative's Sound Blaster Live! Deluxe Edition.
It's a talking parrot app that acts just like the Office assistant. Would be nice if it's preserved in BA's FTP.

[kni]

[Nashville]

I think first version which had assistant is Office 97. Office 2000 and XP also had that, but I am not sure about 2003. That was the memories...

[ongscree]

You can ask cortana if she knows clippy and her response is interesting.

[roblox]

hahah clippy was the man, quite annoying if you are working on something.

[BigCJ]

but I am not sure about 2003.

Clippy was included in Office 2k3, but not installed by default.

[TheDosProgrammer]

MS Office Assistants were annoying and not enough helpful. Maybe is that the reason why MS removed them. There were many types of office assistants (clippy, dog, cat etc.).

[Gnome]

Thread really doesn't contribute to the forums.

Locked