Office Assistant

The Office Assistant is a discontinued intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office that assisted users by way of an interactive animated character which 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 Office Assistant used technology initially from Microsoft Bob and later Microsoft Agent, offering advice based on Bayesian algorithms.

The default assistant in the English version was named Clippit, after a paperclip. Although the name Clippit was used in all versions of Microsoft Office that supported the Office Assistant feature, the assistant became commonly referred to by the public as Clippy, a name which later occasionally bled into Microsoft marketing materials. Clippit was the default Assistant, and by far the most notable (partly because in many cases the setup CD was required to install the other assistants), which also led to it being called simply the Microsoft Paperclip. The Office Assistant and particularly Clippit have been the subject of numerous criticisms and parodies. In November 2021, Microsoft officially updated their design of the paperclip emoji (📎) on Windows 11 to be Clippit.