You may find this feature of Word rather annoying, when you type, even trying to run a command using a keyboard shortcut, and unexpectedly Word opens the Research Bar! Not only you didn’t want that in the first place, but you cannot even close the offending pane immediately, unless you grab the mouse!

Ctrl+Shift+O and Alt+Click open the Research Bar, but they won’t close it!
If you don’t like this function, you can disable it easily. Here is what you need to do:

Press Alt+F11 to open the Macro Editor, then Ctrl+G for the Immediate Command pane. Paste there this line:

Application.CommandBars("Research").Enabled = False

Hit Enter (nothing seems to happen, don’t be disappointed…), Save this (Ctrl+S), and Close the editor. If you need to revert this change, just replace “False” with “True” and follow the same way to enable the Research bar.

* Check also this list with the best free MS Word productivity macros.

Enjoy!