Some people find the Office Assistant very useful. However, others find it to be more of a nuisance if anything else. For those people who never use this feature of Microsoft Office, you can disable it all together by editing the registry.

Now before outlining the registry change, it is important to mention that editing the registry can have negative effects. Before you make any changes, make sure you backup it up first.

To permanently disable the Office Assistant:

1. Open the registry on your computer.

2. Navigate to HKEY_ LOCAL_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\[version]\Common\Assistant where [version] is the version of Office you are running. For example, select 9.0 for Office 2000, 10.0 for Office XP, and 11.0 for Office 2003.
3. Select each key within the details pane and click Delete from the Edit menu. You must delete each DWORD value within the key.
4. Close the Registry Editor.

Before your changes will take effect, you must close all open Office applications. When you re-open them, the Office Assistant will not longer be there.

[tags]microsoft,backup,registry,diana huggins,office assistant[/tags]