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Customized Toolbars and Menus

by Dian D. Chapman

One way to become more efficient using Microsoft Word, is to customize toolbars and menus to allow you to work more efficiently.

Most of us use a handful of features more often than others. So why waste time hunting around for the icon you need. It's easy to create a customized toolbar and customized menus in Word. And if you work on more than one computer, you can easily pass that customization to your other systems so they all work the same.

Normal.dot

First, you need to realize that Word has one, default, master template that it uses to store much of your customization. That is your Normal.dot (dot stands for document template).

Unfortunately, your normal.dot file can also easily become corrupt. In fact, it seems that with each new version of Word, and all the stuff that gets stored in normal.dot, the more it's apt to become corrupt. The problem is that you may have to delete your current normal.dot file to correct some application corruption down the road. And if you don't have a backup of your current normal.dot file, you'll lose all your customization. Very frustrating!

By making it a habit to keep a backup of your normal.dot and update the backup along the way, whenever you add to it, should you need to delete a corrupt version, you can copy back a saved version to restore all your custom settings. Or you can use the Organizer to pass important customization to the new version from your backup.

The Organizer

The Organizer allows you to pass Styles, AutoText entries, Toolbars and Macros from one template to another. The Organizer can be accessed from the Styles dialog box, via Format/Styles or on the Macro dialog, via Tools/Macro/Macro. Once opened, you can click on the appropriate tab to access any customization.

I have a custom toolbar called Dian, which you can see, in the image below, is located in my Normal.dot. Because the normal.dot is a global template, it allows me to use this toolbar from any document or template. That means that the custom toolbar I use, will be visible for all my documents. If I have to delete my default normal.dot file due to corruption, I could pass the toolbar back to the fresh normal.dot file by using the Organizer and copying it from my backup.

Or, maybe I'd like my toolbar at the office. But I already have a lot of customization on that normal.dot file at the office, so I can't copy the whole file over the one at work. I can copy this normal.dot to a file or to a temporary transport template and email it to myself at the office. Then I can use the Organizer to just pass over the toolbar I want, without overwriting the whole file.

Or, maybe I created a macro for a particular project and now realize that it could be useful to me more often, so I want to pass it to my normal.dot file to make it accessible to me all the time. I could open the template that contains the code file I want and pass the macro to my normal.dot file.

Notice the image below. I've clicked the Close button to close the current, blank doc I had open. The Close button then toggles to an Open button, which allows me to access any other file. I ferret around my hard drive to find that old MStar template I built. I open it in the Organizer. Now I can click the TaxToTotal macro and click Copy to add this tax calculation macro to my normal.dot file. This would make it accessible to me all the time. I could then place a shortcut for that macro on my custom toolbar or a menu. And, of course, since I added new customization, I would remember to save a new backup copy of my newly revised normal.dot!

Custom Toolbars

This is my custom toolbar (see below). Rather than taking up valuable Real Estate on my screen by having a bunch of Word toolbars open, I took my favorite commands and assembled them on one, customized toolbar. Then I just turn this one on. Sure, occasionally I have to turn on other toolbars. But my customized toolbar helps me speed along with tasks I perform most often. And because I've copied it to all my computers, I don't have to hunt around because I've become very familiar with where things are located.

Normally, my toolbar is stretched across the top of my Word screen, as my only toolbar. (I squished it for this picture.) Here I have an icon to open a new document, open a file, close a document, save a file, page setup, and print preview. I have two print icons I customized, one prints the current page only, the other (with the blue dots above it) opens the print dialog box. I have a send document icon and a redo icon. I found undo is easy to remember, Ctrl/Z. But I always had trouble remember Redo, so I keep it handy.

Then I have my zoom buttons, one for setting any percentage, one for screen width, and one for full page, so I can quickly zoom in/out. I have an insert picture icon, since I do that a lot. A What's This icon so I can quickly check formatting. I use Arial and Times fonts most often, so I put them on my toolbar. But I also added the full font selector and size selector (although I usually use the Ctrl/Shift/> shortcut key combo to quickly set the size).

I have my style window, my show/hide button to check hidden codes, my format painter and bullet shortcut. I created a custom macro run button to quickly access macros (that's the pathetic M> button<g>). Then I have my VB Editor button. Also a macro I wrote to quickly plop a table in my favorite style on a page, as well as the insert table icon and a couple table formatting buttons (which are grayed out because I took this picture when no table was accessed on the screen). A quick access icon to BordersAndShading, which I renamed BS. And finally, some of my most commonly used AutoForm buttons from that toolbar.

Roll Your Own

Creating your own customized toolbar is a breeze! Just click Tools/Customize to open the toolbar/menu Customize dialog box. Click on Toolbars and click New to create a new toolbar. A short dialog box will open to allow you to name the toolbar. Give it a name and check to make sure you're saving it into the Normal.dot template, unless you specifically want it available only in some special template. In that case, make sure the name of your special template appears in the Make toolbar available in: dropdown box. But this means it'll only be accessible when you have that special template open. (Unless you move that template into your Word\Startup directory, which makes any template a global template.

After you've given the toolbar a name, it'll appear on your screen. Then click the Command tab and select a group from the left side list (see image below). When you do, all the available features for that group will appear on the right. Scroll down the list until you find a shortcut icon you want on your toolbar. Click it, hold your mouse button down and drag the icon over and drop it on your new toolbar. Scroll down the list, checking each group and scrolling through all the commands until you're satisfied that you have all the icons you feel are most useful to you. Then you can click View/Toolbars and turn off those toolbars you no longer need. Then turn on your new, customized toolbar.

My Menu

Customizing menus is a great way to keep your favorite things handy without having a lot of toolbars hanging around. It's also a perfect way to add custom features to a special template. Maybe you've created an AutoForm and you want some special features to be available to the user when they use this form. You can create macros or add features on a customized menu. Then just tell the user to pay special attention to the options available on that special, customized menu. Give it a name similar to the template name, so they'll be sure to notice it. If you save it to the special template, it will only show up when that special template is used! I like to keep some of my favorite macros handy on my own code menu, as you can see in the image below.

To add your own menu, you start out the same as you did to create a custom Toolbar, click Tools/Customize. Select the Command tab and scroll down to the New Menu option (see below). Select it and drag a new menu up to your main menu. Although you can place a new menu anywhere on your main menu, it's wise to put it at the end.

You can also right click the new menu item and choose to create a New Group. This will add a vertical bar to help set the new menu off from the main menu items. You'll notice (see below) that you can also rename the menu item. And if you add an ampersand in front of a letter, it will make that letter the shortcut key. So you can quickly access it by hitting Alt + the underlined letter. Notice the & before the N adds an underline in New. Alt+N would then open that menu from the keyboard!

Once your new menu item is on the main menu bar, just continue as you would when creating a toolbar by scrolling down the list of Commands until you see one you want to keep handy. Then click it and drag it up to the menu. Once it's on the menu, right click it and you'll have several choices (see below) which will allow you to rename the item and even add a icon. You can also add hyperlinks that will allow you to quickly access pages on the web or other files on your hard drive.

And if you have any artistic abilities, you can select Edit Button Image to open the icon editor and modify an existing icon.

Swiping Icons from Other Programs

Someone recently asked how they could use an icon from some other program. They liked the image and wanted to swipe it for one of their own menus. So here's how you can do it

When you click Tools/Customize and right click any menu or toolbar item, you'll notice a mini menu appears that provides you options. That's the one I showed you above, where you could customize your icon pictures. (See image, again, below.)

Notice the Copy Button Image and Paste Button Image options. If the icon you want to use is within Word, you can easily just right click on it. The mini menu will appear, click Copy Button Image. This puts a copy of the icon onto your Clipboard. Now you can move to the toolbar/menu item where you want that image to appear, right click it and choose Paste Button Image. The image will be copied to the new location.

But what if you want to swipe an icon from some other program? Well, first you have to consider the size. Icons are only 16 x 16 pixels (tiny squares of space). So you'll want to copy something small, so it won't look warped when you paste it into that tiny space. But who cares about rules<smile>, I just love dogs and I love Rocky, the dog Office Assistant! So I'm going to put a tiny image of him on my toolbar!

First I have to have him appear on my screen. So I turn him on and press PrntScrn to take a screenshot (picture of my screen), which is copied to the clipboard. It won't seem like anything happened, but I know it's there! Although I have many graphic programs, I'll show you how to do this in Paint, in case that's all you have. Just click Start/Programs/Assessories/Paint to open Windows paint program. Once open, click Edit/Paste to dump your screenshot onto the page.

Now I need to cut Rocky out of the page so I can copy him. However, notice how big he is! Obviously, he's not going to squish into that tiny 16 x 16 space for an icon. Keep this in mind when you're thinking about what you want to swipe. Use a tiny image! But we'll try this anyway to demonstrate how it works, because I just enjoy working with Rocky!<grin>

I click on the square Selection tool and cut out Rocky's face.

Then I click Edit/Copy and Edit/Paste to cut/paste the selection back onto the page. Notice the new item drops in the upper portion of the page.

Although there is really no need to paste him on this page, I do so just to check what my image looks like. From here I can click Edit/CopyTo if I wanted to save his head to an image file. But I don't need to do that. Since the copy is still on the Clipboard, because that's the last thing I put there, I just have to move to Word and paste this new image into my menu.

I click Tools/Customize. Click on my menu to open it. Right click on the item where I want the image pasted and click Paste Button Image. As you can see, it's not a very good likeness!<grin>

OK, I'll give up on Rocky and just change the icon to a heart. I click Change Button Image and select a heart.

Rocky didn't turn out too well, because he was so much bigger than the 16 x 16 space I'm allowed. But as you can see from the image below, I was able to do the same capture and snap up an icon from Napster, which worked better, because its original size was smaller.

Have fun with customizing your toolbars and menus. But remember to watch to be sure you're saving these customizations in your Normal.dot so they'll always be available, unless you specifically want them in some other custom template. And also, please make sure to regularly backup your normal.dot file whenever you add any Styles, AutoText, Toolbars, Menus or Macros. Then if you have to delete your normal.dot to solve some corruption issues, you don't want lose all your customization. Keep a copy in some personal file. Then you'll know you can always send a copy back to your template default directory to get yourself up and running without starting over!