The Microsoft Paperclip Returns – Clippy To Come Back To Microsoft 365

The Office Assistant which became known as Clippy, which irritated users of Microsoft Office all over the world between 1997 and 2003, will be coming back as an emoji in Microsoft 365.

Looking to jump on the bandwagon of Clippy nostalgia, Microsoft’s Twitter account tweeted out an announcement that if their tweet got 20k likes, they would ‘replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy’.

The Microsoft marketing team may have played another blinder with this one, as the 20K target was smashed in under and hour (was there ever any doubt?) and less than 18 hours later the tweet had amassed 133k likes. It would seem therefore that the paperclip everyone loved to hate is definitely coming back, but hopefully in a less annoying form. We will have to see if Microsoft’s promise just extends to a simple reskin of a button or something more.

Return Of The Clip

A Brief History Of Clippy The Paperclip

Clippy also known as Clippit, was introduced back in Office 97 as an office assistant, whose ‘assistance’ primarily consisted of useless suggestions and irritating pop-ups whilst you were busy trying to type up a document.

People understandably grew to hate and usually disabled the little anthropomorphic paperclip. Eventually, Microsoft cottoned on, making up a series of adverts in 2003 with the launch of Microsoft Office XP (see above) that acknowledged the hate and announced the removal of Clippy, even getting the legendary Gilbert Gottfried to voice The ‘Clip himself.

Nevertheless, Clippy was a big part of many peoples’ first experiences with Microsoft Office, and nostalgia is a powerful force. Many who grew up at the time, myself included, will fondly remember working out how to change Clippy into his alternate forms of a wizard or a dog (a simpler age – we made our own fun!). As with many things on the internet, Clippy has become somewhat of a meme over time, and the Clippy background which Microsoft released for Microsoft Teams has proved to be very popular.

Evidently, Microsoft has seen an opportunity to ride this nostalgic wave and, as long as we don’t have to put up with any irritating notifications, we’re all for it.

Long Live The Clip!