Customizing Toolbars and Menus

You can thoroughly customize any menu or toolbar to include exactly the commands you want, and you can create new menus or toolbars for any purpose you choose.

The techniques for customizing both menu bars and toolbars are very similar, though not always identical. This isn't surprising, because under the hood, Word menu bars and toolbars are interchangeable. (The proof? If you so desire, you can place buttons on menu bars and menu commands on toolbars.)

In the following sections, we introduce the techniques you need to know to customize any menu bar or toolbar. You'll first discover how to add commonly used buttons to any existing toolbar. Next, we'll introduce the Customize dialog box, showing how to use it to make a wide variety of changes to menu bars and toolbars, including these:

• Adding commands

• Creating toolbar or menu items that insert pictures or load hyperlinks

• Removing commands

• Rearranging and organizing menu bars or toolbars

• Renaming commands or changing toolbar icons

• Adding or removing new toolbars or menu bars

• Adding or changing keyboard shortcuts associated with menu items

In particular, we'll introduce the new Rearrange Commands dialog box, which makes many interface customizations far more intuitive than they were in earlier versions of Word.

Adding a Commonly Used Command to a Toolbar

You may occasionally want to add a command to a toolbar that is closely related to the commands that are already present?or, perhaps, a command that appeared on that toolbar in an earlier version of Word but has since been removed. For example, you know that the Standard toolbar contains an Open command; why not a Close command? Or, perhaps, you often create superscript and subscript text; why not place those commands on the Formatting toolbar?

Word makes it easy to make changes like this. To add or remove a commonly used button from a toolbar, follow these steps:

Adding Commands to a Toolbar or Menu Bar Using Rearrange Commands

Often, you may want to add commands to a toolbar that Word does not provide in its list of alternatives. For example, if you are working in a legal firm or department, you might want to add the Legal Blackline command to your Reviewing toolbar. Or you might want to add commands to a menu. For example, you might like the File menu to include a Save All command.

You can add any Word command to any toolbar or menu bar. To do so, first make sure that the toolbar or menu bar you want to customize is displayed. Then continue this way:

Word places your new command at the end of the menu or toolbar.

It's worth taking a moment to look more closely at the Add Command dialog box, to see just how extensively you can customize Word. You can add commands from all the following Categories:

• The categories File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Table, Window, and Help correspond to Word's menus of the same names. However, they include many options that don't appear on standard Word menu bars. For example, the File category includes items such as Close All and Save All?items that "didn't quite make the cut" to be displayed on the standard File menu.

• Several other categories, including Web, Drawing, AutoShapes, Borders, Mail Merge, Forms, and Control Toolbox, correspond to existing Word toolbars. Again, more options are typically available in the Customize dialog box than on the default Word toolbars. From the Commands tab, you can add these buttons to any toolbar you want.

• The All Commands category lists more than 400 individual commands Word can perform?everything from ApplyHeading1 (format selected text with the Heading 1 style) to WordUnderline (apply underlining to all selected words but not the spaces between them).

• The Macros category lists all currently available macros, allowing you to create a toolbar button or menu item for any existing macro.

• The Fonts category lists all currently available fonts, making it possible for you to create a toolbar button or menu item that automatically formats any selected text in any font on your system.

• The AutoText category lists all AutoText entries in all open templates, so you can create a toolbar button or menu item that inserts any AutoText entry you want.

• The Styles category lists all available styles, including any custom styles you've created. You can create a toolbar button or menu item that applies any style you want.

Dragging Commands to a Toolbar or Menu Bar

With Word 2003, Microsoft has introduced the Rearrange Commands dialog box to simplify interface customizations. However, if you have customized earlier versions of Word, the procedures you already know still work. For example, you can still add a command to a toolbar or menu bar as detailed here:

If you associate a button with a macro, and the button doesn't work after you copy it to a new template, see "What to Do If You Copy Custom Buttons Between Templates, but the Buttons Don't Work in the New Template," in the "Troubleshooting" section of this chapter.

Removing Commands from a Toolbar or Menu Bar

Some people find Word's menus cluttered; they like to remove menu bar or toolbar commands they know they'll never use. Word's Rearrange Commands dialog box makes this easy. First, make sure that the toolbar or menu bar you want to change is displayed. Then, follow these steps: