OFF98: Cannot Dismiss Office Assistant with the Keyboard

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If you press CONTROL and click the Office Assistant window in any Microsoft Office 98 program, one of the commands on the shortcut menu that appears is Hide Assistant. If you press H while the shortcut menu is visible, the Office Assistant is dismissed. You cannot display the shortcut menu by using only the keyboard. However, you can write a Visual Basic for Applications macro to display or hide the Office Assistant

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. To use a macro to display or hide the Office Assistant, use the following macro:

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

When you run this macro, if the Office Assistant is visible, it is dismissed. If the Office Assistant is not visible, it is displayed. This macro works in all Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition programs.

In Microsoft Excel 98, 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"
       ' Note that "o" is the letter "o."
   End Sub
				

After you have run the SetShortcutKey macro, press OPTION+COMMAND+O to run the ToggleOfficeAssistant macro and turn your Office Assistant on or off.