OFF97: Cannot Dismiss Office Assistant With Keyboard

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Access 97 for Windows
• Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

In the Microsoft Office 97 programs listed at the beginning of this article, there is no key or combination of keys on the keyboard that you can use to dismiss the Office Assistant.

CAUSE

You can only dismiss the Office Assistant by using a mouse or other pointing device.

STATUS

This behavior is by design of the programs included with Microsoft Office 97.

MORE INFORMATION

If you right-click the Office Assistant window in any Microsoft Office 97 program, one of the choices on the shortcut menu that appears is "Hide Assistant". Because the "H" in "Hide" is underlined, if you press "h" while the shortcut menu is visible, the Office Assistant will be dismissed. There is no way to achieve this using only the keyboard.

Microsoft provides examples of Visual Basic for Applications procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. The Visual Basic procedures in this article are provided 'as is' and Microsoft does not guarantee that they can be used in all situations. While Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular macro, they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality, nor will they help you construct macros to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to consult one of the Microsoft Solution Providers. Solution Providers offer a wide range of fee-based services, including creating custom macros. For more information about Microsoft Solution Providers, call Microsoft Customer Information Service at (800) 426-9400.

It is possible, however, to write a Visual Basic for Applications macro to display or hide the Office Assistant. For example:

   Sub ToggleOfficeAssistant()
      Assistant.Visible = Not Assistant.Visible
   End Sub

In Microsoft Excel 97, you can assign a shortcut key to the ToggleOfficeAssistant macro by running the following macro:

   Sub SetShortcutKey()
       Application.MacroOptions Macro:="ToggleOfficeAssistant", _
          HasShortcutKey:=True, ShortcutKey:="o"
   End Sub