Customize Office Toolbars

Starting with Microsoft Office 2000 and the XP version afterward, software engineers in Redmond decided that showing an entire menu in Word, Excel or any of the Office programs would confuse software users.

Instead of showing the entire menu when clicking on File, Edit, Format, etc, from the menus, we are presented with an abbreviated menu showing only two or three options. In order to view the entire menu, we can either wait a few seconds (who has that kind of time) or click on the double arrows at bottom of the menu.

Thankfully, you can reverse this process, if you wish. You can restore order to the Office menu system and view all the menus with a single click. Follow these steps for either Office 2000 or Office XP products (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Front Page, Access, Outlook (not Express), and Publisher):

1. Click View from the menus
2. Click Toolbars
3. Click Customize
4. Click the Options tab
5. Uncheck the "Show full menus after a short delay"
6. Check the "Always show full menus" (in XP editions)
7. Uncheck the "Menus show recently used commands first" (2000 editions)
8. Click Close

If you want the two toolbars at the top of the screen to be separated versus sharing one row, follow steps 1-3 above, then:

* In Office XP versions, click the box that says "Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows."

* In Office 2000 versions, uncheck the box that says "Standard and Formatting toolbars share one row."

Lastly, take customization to a whole new level by adding the commands you use most often as buttons on your toolbar by following steps 1-3 above, then click the Commands tab. From here, you can drag any command you would like (like printing envelopes or view headers and footers) to the toolbar. Simply click the command from the list and drag it into the position of your choice on the toolbar.

Likewise, you can delete any icon you don't need showing on the toolbar by dragging it back to the Commands section.

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