Office 97 introduced "Command Bars", a paradigm in which menus and toolbars are made more similar in capability and visual design. It also featured natural language systems and sophisticated grammar checking. Office 97 introduced the
Office Assistant, an interactive animated character designed to assist users via Office help content. The default assistant is "Clippit", nicknamed "Clippy", a paperclip. Office 97 is the first
Microsoft product to include
product activation, albeit limited to the
Brazilian editions of Office 97 Small Business Edition and
Publisher. An option to upgrade to Internet Explorer 3.02 came with the Office Professional version, though the icon would not appear if the browser was already installed. Three Office 97 applications feature
easter eggs: a hidden
pinball game in
Microsoft Word, a hidden
flight simulator in
Microsoft Excel and a secret developer credits screen in
Microsoft Word. The latter went undiscovered for 29 years. Office 97 supported
UTF-16. ==Editions==