On November 19th, 1997, Microsoft released Microsoft Office 97, which introduced the Microsoft Office Assistant. The Office Assistants came in a variety of different animated characters to choose from, with the most iconic being an animated paperclip named Clippit, which commonly became referred to as "Clippy" by the public. The Office Assistants also appeared with Microsoft Publisher, Project, and FrontPage, and were eventually discontinued following the release of Microsoft Office 2003 on May 11th, 2004, which was the final version of Microsoft Office to feature the Office Assistant.
