PUB98: Assistant Appears Twice in Office Assistant Gallery (204488)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Publisher 98
This article was previously published under Q204488

SYMPTOMS

When you choose an Office Assistant, some assistants may appear twice in the Office Assistant gallery.

CAUSE

This behavior can occur if both of the following conditions are true:
  • You have run Microsoft Publisher 98 Setup in maintenance mode and selected the Reinstall option.
  • You have previously activated any Office Assistant character other than Clippit (the paper clip).

RESOLUTION

To remove duplicate assistants from the Office Assistant gallery:
  1. Right-click inside the Office Assistant window, and then click Options.
  2. Click the Gallery tab.
  3. Click the Back and Next buttons to display the first (leftmost) instance of the duplicate assistant.
  4. Click OK.
The duplicate assistant should no longer appear in the Office Assistant gallery.

NOTE: If the assistant that appears twice is the active assistant, you must select an assistant that does not appear twice before you follow these steps.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, you must manually delete the duplicate assistants:

NOTE: Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.
  1. Quit all running programs.
  2. Click Start, and then click Run.
  3. In the Open box, type the following line (including the quotation marks), and then click OK: c:/program files/microsoft office/office/actors

  4. Each assistant should appear only once with either an .acp or an .act file extension. If an assistant appears twice (for example, Powerpup.act and Powerpup.acp), right-click the .acp file for that assistant, and then click Delete.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

When you first install Microsoft Publisher 98, the following Microsoft Office Assistant files are installed into the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Actors folder on your hard disk: 
   File Name      File Type
   --------------------------------------------
   Clippit.act    Office Assistant Actor file
   Dot.acp        Office Assistant Preview file
   Genius.acp     Office Assistant Preview file
   Hoverbot.acp   Office Assistant Preview file
   Logo.acp       Office Assistant Preview file
   Mnature.acp    Office Assistant Preview file
   Powerpup.acp   Office Assistant Preview file
   Scribble.acp   Office Assistant Preview file
   Will.acp       Office Assistant Preview file
Publisher 98 Setup installs the Actor (.act) file instead of the Preview (.acp) file for Clippit because Clippit is the default Office Assistant.

When you use the Microsoft Office Assistant Gallery to switch to a different Office Assistant, such as PowerPup, the Actor file for that assistant (Powerpup.act) is installed and the Preview file for the assistant (Powerpup.acp) is removed.

When you run Microsoft Publisher 98 Setup in maintenance mode and select the Reinstall option, Setup reinstalls files that are no longer present. Using the previous example, the Setup program reinstalls the Powerpup.acp file because it is no longer present.

As a result, the Powerpup.acp file and the Powerpup.act file are both installed on your hard disk, causing two instances of the assistant to be displayed in the Office Assistant gallery.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:6/9/2000
Keywords:kbprb kbsetup kbui KB204488
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