History Īccording to Alan Cooper, the 'Father of Visual Basic', the concept of Clippit was based on a 'tragic misunderstanding' of research conducted at Stanford University, showing that the same part of the brain in use while using a mouse or keyboard was also responsible for emotional reactions while interacting with other human beings and thus is the reason people yell at their computer monitors. The Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine allowed the Office Assistant to accept speech input. Furthermore, the Office Assistant could use the Lernout & Hauspie TruVoice Text-to-Speech Engine to provide output speech capabilities to Microsoft Agent, but it required SAPI 4.0. Microsoft Agent-based characters have richer forms and colors, and are not enclosed within a boxed window. Users can add other assistants to the folder where Office is installed for them to show up in the Office application, or install in the Microsoft Agent folder in System32 folder.

From Office 2000 onward, Microsoft Agent (.acs) replaced the Microsoft Bob-descended Actor (.act) format as the technology supporting the feature. 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. 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 20), and Microsoft Office for Mac (versions 98 to 2004). It assisted users by way of an interactive animated character that interfaced with the Office help content. The Office Assistant was an intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office. In November 2021, Microsoft officially updated their design of the paperclip emoji (📎) on Windows 11 to be Clippit. The Office Assistant and particularly Clippit have been the subject of numerous criticism and parodies. Clippit was the default, and by far the most notable, Assistant (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 default assistant in the English version was named Clippit (sometimes later called ' Clippy'), after a paperclip.

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. Clippit, the default Office Assistant, as seen in Office 2000 through 2003 (top) and as the paperclip emoji (📎) on Windows 11 (bottom)

Origami jumping paper cat