Goodbye Mr. Paperclip

by Dick Pilz

Many people who use Microsoft Office products are put off by the overly-helpful Assistants that appear ubiquitously in the lower right hand corner. With some simple registry changes the Assistant feature may be disabled or turned off. There are products that allow you to write a script or macro that can automate this task or you may write your own .REG file.

Office 97 is the most difficult, because the value that needs to be changed is dependent on what drive a particular user's application is launched from. The key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\Assistant

The value is AsstPath. If you inspect the contents of that value with RegEdit.exe, you will find that the data it contains looks something like this:

"DRIVE-LETTER\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Actors"

where "DRIVE-LETTER" is the drive that Office is launched from. For automation, you will need logic in your script or macro to detect which drive this is. (An example script is appended.) Just truncate the AsstPath value by removing the word "Actors" and Mr. Clippit will disappear from all Office 97 applications. You will then have standard F1 key help, as in Word 95. The change is global for the machine - it applies to all users.

If you need to, you may repair the path in the registry, and Mr. Clippit will be restored.

Office 2000 is somewhat easier to implement but it is user specific and needs to be applied for each user. You cannot just modify the path, since Office 2000 will interpret that as damage and attempt to repair it. Here, the key is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Assistant

The value is CurrAsstState for 9x systems and AsstState for NT and W2k. If the Assistant is active, you will see a dword data value of (hex) 0x15 (21 decimal). Just increase this value to (hex) 0x26 (38 decimal) and the Assistant will be turned off for all Office applications for that user. When the user logs off or shuts down, the information is saved in the appropriate HKEY_USERS key.

APPENDIX

Sample script for AutoInstall (from Symantec), DeltaDeploy (from PowerQuest)and LanDesk Management Suite Package Builder (from Intel) to remove the Office Assistant from Office 97 installations:

REM -- Mr Paperclip Must Die --
REM -- This program removes Office Assistant from Office 97 --
REM -- Usage: KillAsst.exe
REM Author: Dick Pilz
REM 10/08/98
REM This program illustrates the capability of effecting a single registry change
REM on enduser systems
 
REM First, find out where he lives

REM A blue screen will appear with a message box
REM saying "Checking your system"
IF LOCATE("clippit.act", local)

REM If he is found on a local drive, the variable $LOCATEDRIVE$
REM automatically is assigned to his drive letter.

BEGINREGISTRY
KEY: new,
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\Assistant"
VALUE: reg_sz, replace, "AsstPath", "$LOCATEDRIVE$\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office"
ENDREGISTRY

REM The path gets truncated by one subdirectory (Actors)
REM and Mr.Paperclip is history.

ELSE

IF LOCATE("clippit.act", network)
REM If he is found on a network drive, the variable $LOCATEDRIVE$
REM automatically is assigned to his drive letter. The search was broken down
REM into two stages to speed things up by checking the
REM most likely (i.e. local) case first.

BEGINREGISTRY
KEY: new,
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Common\Assistant"
VALUE: reg_sz, replace, "AsstPath", "$LOCATEDRIVE$\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office"
ENDREGISTRY

ELSE

EXITMESSAGE caption="I'm Sorry"
Mr. Paperclip could not be found. He may yet live to see another day
EXIT
REM This message is the only interactive thing that will display
REM when this program is run.
ENDIF
ENDIF