Creating a Toolbar for Your Styles

Applying styles by clicking toolbar buttons is much faster than accessing them in the Style list in the Formatting toolbar or in the Styles and Formatting task pane. If you will be using styles extensively, work through this section to create a toolbar that contains buttons for your styles. If you don't think you'll use styles that frequently, feel free to pass by this topic and skip to the summary at the end of this hour .

Follow these steps to create a toolbar for your styles:

1. Open a document that contains the styles you want to put on the toolbar, and then choose Tools, Customize to display the Customize dialog box.

2. Click the Toolbars tab if it isn't already in front.

3. Click the New button to display the New Toolbar dialog box (see Figure 9.14).

   Figure 9.14. Name your toolbar in the New Toolbar dialog box.

   

4. Type a name for your toolbar (you might call it Styles) and specify the template in the Make Toolbar Available To drop-down list. You will most likely want to make the toolbar available to all documents, so choose Normal. Click OK .

5. Word creates an empty toolbar floating over your document. Click the Commands tab in the Customize dialog box.

6. Scroll down the Categories list on the left side of the dialog box and click Styles to display a list of the styles in the current document in the Commands list on the right.

7. Drag the styles one by one from the Commands list, and drop them onto the new toolbar (see Figure 9.15).

   Figure 9.15. Drag styles from the Customize dialog box to create buttons for them on your new toolbar.

   

8. The default button names are rather long. To shorten them, right-click each button to display a context menu and edit its name in the Name text box (see Figure 9.16). You can use any name that reminds you which style the button will apply.

   Figure 9.16. Shortening the button names enables you to fit more buttons on the toolbar.

   

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

Try applying some styles with your new toolbar. You can move the toolbar wherever you like, and display and hide it as you do all the other toolbars (refer to "Working with Toolbars" in Hour 1, "Getting Acquainted with Word").