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How to customize
toolbars in MS Word 98
by Malika Weil

Work more efficiently!

ave you noticed that standard toolbars in word processing software often include icons for commands that you never use, but lack buttons for commands that you frequently need? Rather than constantly going to the menus for those commands, you can easily customize your toolbars. Get rid of the button clutter and add only the icons you really use so that you work more efficiently. Word 98 offers an easy click and drag method for making these changes.

1. Under the Tools menu, select Customize. A "dialog box" with tabs will open up on your screen. It will look like the one below. Leave this window open while you are modifying your toolbars.

2. Show the toolbar that you want to customize by clicking in the box next to its name in the Customize dialog box. Each toolbar that you select will appear on your screen.

The "Customize Tools" dialogue box with the "custom 1" toolbar highlighted.

The "New Toolbar" dialogue box with "Custom 1" in the "toolbar name" text field.

ou can also create a new toolbar by clicking on New . . . . A small dialog box like the one on the left will ask you to name the toolbar, and choose whether it should be available normally or with a specific document.

A tiny empty box like this will appear, ready to receive new menu icons.

3. Now get rid of the buttons you don't use. While the Customize dialog box is still open: on the toolbar itself, simply click and drag the icons you don't need off of the toolbars.

4. Finally, add those time-saving new buttons! In the Customize dialog box, click on the Commands tab. In a box on the left, you will see a list of "Categories." On the right side you will see a list of icons with their associated "Commands." By choosing a different category, you will see a different list of icons and commands.

The "customize commands" dialogue box open with "File" highlighted.

To add a new icon to any of your toolbars, simply click and drag the icon from the dialog box to a place on the toolbar. Don't try to place it to the right of all the other icons. That space isn't really part of the toolbar yet.

The "modify selection" dialogue box with "default style" checked.

ou can even change the appearance of the icons, if you want to. Select an icon on the toolbar by clicking once on it. (The dialog box is still open.) Click on "Modify Selection" to see a menu like the one on the left.

You can choose "Text Only" or "Image and Text," or by clicking on "Change Button Image," you can choose a totally different icon for the button.

This is also useful if the particular command that you inserted in a toolbar was only text, and you want to have an icon instead. In that case, select the command (in the toolbar) by clicking on it, choose "Default Style" (the words for that command will disappear from the toolbar, leaving a space), then choose the icon you want to use from the "Change Button Image" selections.

or ease of use, you can very easily group icons, with divider bars between them, by simply dragging neighboring items slightly to the right or left. Be very careful though if the item you are moving is on the end. If you drag it too far, Word98 thinks you are dragging it off the toolbar and it will disappear!

Two sample toolbars with scissors (cut), clipboard, broom, and other icons.

astly, if you ever want to return the menu bars to their original settings, just click on the Toolbars tab in the Customize dialog box and choose Reset. The selected toolbars will revert to their original configurations.

When you have your toolbars exactly the way you want them, you can close the "Customize" window and get to work!

Created by Malika Weil University of Kansas, Lawrence

Malika Weil is a staff writer for www4teachers.

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