Chapter 2. Creating and Saving Documents

TOOLBARS

Sort Out the Standard Toolbar and Formatting Toolbar

The Annoyance:

The Standard toolbar and Formatting toolbar have decided to share a row and to each hide half their buttons .

The Fix:

Choose Tools Customize, click the Options tab, check the "Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows box, and click the Close button. In Word 2000, this option is implemented the other way around: the checkbox is called "Standard and Formatting toolbars share one row," and you need to uncheck the box.

Put a Close Document Button on the Standard Toolbar

The Annoyance:

If you open a document, you'll more than likely want to close it sometime, but there's no Close button on the Standard toolbar.

The Fix:

You can put a Close button on the Standard toolbar easily enough, and you can put a Close All button on it as well:

1. Choose Tools Customize. In the Customize dialog box, click the Commands tab if its not already displayed.

2. Make sure that Normal.dot is selected in the "Save in" drop-down list.

3. With the File item selected in the Categories listbox, scroll down to the Close item in the Commands list. Drag it to the Standard toolbar and drop it there (see Figure 1-10).

4. If you choose, drag the Close All item to the Standard toolbar as well. If you do, you'll find that its icon is identical to that of the Close button, which can be confusing. To change one of the buttons, click it on the Standard toolbar and click the Modify Selection button in the Customize dialog box. Then take one of the following actions.

   Figure 1-10. Use the Customize dialog box to add a Close buttonand, if you like, a Close All buttonto the Standard toolbar to make closing your documents easier.

   
   

   • Click the Text Only (Always) item to display only text for the button instead of the icon.

   • Click the Image and Text item to display both the icon and the text. This produces the most intelligible button, but it occupies more space than you may want to give it.

   • Click the Edit Button Image item and use the Button Editor (see Figure 1-11) to change the image. You can edit one pixel at a time, or wipe the slate so that you can start from scratch.

   • Click the Change Button Image item and choose one of the ready-made buttons on the panel.

5. Click the Close button to close the Customize dialog box.

6. Shift-click the File menu, and then click Save All to save the changes to Normal.dot .

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Tip: If you don't want to add a Close button to the Standard toolbar (or another toolbar), you can close a document by clicking the close button (the X button) in the upper-right corner of its window.

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Figure 1-11. Use the Button Editor to change the icon on a button, either subtly or completely.

Consolidate Your Toolbars into a Custom Toolbar

The Annoyance:

I use buttons on about 10 different toolbars, and between them they're turning the document window into a document porthole.

The Fix:

Word has plenty of toolbars, as you say, and you can save valuable screen space by consolidating the buttons you use onto a single toolbareither an existing toolbar or (usually better) a custom toolbar. Here's how to create a custom toolbar:

1. Display all the toolbars that you normally use.

2. Choose Tools Customize and click the Toolbars tab.

3. Normal.dot is usually the best bet here), and click the OK button.

4. Click the Close button to close the Customize dialog box.

5. Hold down Ctrl+Alt and drag each desired button from the other toolbars to the new custom toolbar. To rearrange the buttons on the new toolbar, hold down the Alt key and drag a button. To create a separator line between buttons, drag the righthand button a short distance to the right (or drag the lower button down a short distance if the toolbar is vertical rather than horizontal).

Reset Menus or Toolbars That Someone Else Has Customized

The Annoyance:

A new temp borrowed my desk last week while I was out of town, and she messed up my menus and toolbars in the name of progress.

The Fix:

You can reset the menus and toolbars to their default settings in moments. Choose Tools Customize and click the Toolbars tab. Click the toolbar or menu you want to reset (to reset all menus on the menu bar, select the Menu Bar item) and click the Reset button. In the Reset Toolbar dialog box, make sure that Word has selected the right template or document, and then click the OK button.

After you close the Customize dialog box, Shift-click the File menu and choose Save All. If Word prompts you to save changes to the Normal template, click the Yes button.

Get Rid of Proprietary Toolbars

The Annoyance:

Since I installed Adobe Acrobat, Word always displays an Acrobat toolbar when I start it. I can hide the toolbar, but it always comes back.

The Fix:

This toolbar, which is called PDFMaker, is part of the PDFMaker.dot template that Acrobat automatically installs on the assumption that you want to be able to create PDF documents (documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format) at any moment from Word. If you do want to create PDFs, the toolbar is handy; otherwise , it's an annoyance.

To remove this template, you must first unload the PDFMaker.dot add-in. Choose Tools Templates and Add-Ins, click the PDFMaker.dot add-in, and note its location in the "Full path " readout. If it's in the Startup subfolder of your Office folder, exit Word, open a Windows Explorer window to that folder, and move PDFMaker.dot to a different folder. Otherwise, select PDFMaker.dot and click the Remove button. When ( if ) you need to create a PDF, reload the PDFMaker.dot add-in. Choose Tools Templates and Add-Ins, and either check the box for PDFMaker.dot or click the Add button, navigate to and select the template, and click OK. Then click the OK button to close the Templates and Add-ins dialog box.

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Tip: Other applications may install their own menus or toolbars. These are usually part of a global template that you can unload if you so choose.

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Choose One or Multiple Word Buttons on the Taskbar

The Annoyance:

Having multiple Word windows and multiple Word taskbar buttons bugs me to distraction. Why can't Word behave the same way as Excel and keep all the documents in the same window?

The Fix:

There's good news on this front (unless you're using Word 2000): Word 2003 and Word XP let you choose whether to keep each open Word document in its own window (with its own taskbar button) or keep all open Word documents in a single window (with a single taskbar button for the active document). Figure 1-12 shows an example.

Figure 1-12. Word 2003 and Word XP can display all open documents in a single Word window or each open document in its own window; Word 2000 can manage only multiple windows. Word users can argue for hours about which is better, but you can switch between the two options in seconds.

To make the switch, choose Tools Options and click the View tab if its not already displayed. Uncheck the "Windows in Taskbar" box if you want to show all open documents in a single Word window that has one taskbar button. If you check this box (the default setting), you see a separate window for each open document, each of which has its own taskbar button.