Help pane pain: How can I miss it if it won't go away

[Friendly Wildebeast]

I'm using Excel X from Office X for the Mac, Service release 1, and
whenever the help pane appears (whether on those occasions when I ask
for it, or when it comes up automatically), there doesn't seem to be
anything I can do to make it go away short of quitting the application
and restarting it. It behaves like a drawer that's stuck to the menu
bar, but which won't retract, and can't be made small enough to be out
of the way. I've tried deleting preference, settings, and toolbar
prefs to no avail: any other suggestions would be appreciated --

 

[John McGimpsey]

I'm using Excel X from Office X for the Mac, Service release 1, and
whenever the help pane appears (whether on those occasions when I ask
for it, or when it comes up automatically), there doesn't seem to be
anything I can do to make it go away short of quitting the application
and restarting it. It behaves like a drawer that's stuck to the menu
bar, but which won't retract, and can't be made small enough to be out
of the way. I've tried deleting preference, settings, and toolbar
prefs to no avail: any other suggestions would be appreciated --

This is bizarre - Help in Office v.X is a separate window, not a pane,
and it should never come up "automatically". It should definitely not be
stuck to the menu bar.

Help is an Office component, so try deleting the Office Registration
Cache and the Office Registration Database in the Preferences folder.
make sure that all office apps are closed when you delete preferences,
or when they close, they'll write the files back.

 

[Mark Riddle]

This is bizarre - Help in Office v.X is a separate window, not a pane,

Thanks for your suggestion: deleting the Office files did the trick -- I'm
oooh so grateful--