Menu and Toolbar Tips for All Microsoft Office Applications

They've ruined the menus for the average user. In my Recommended Menu Settings for Microsoft Word, we show you more specific settings. Here, we just want to show you a few tips.

Showing it All

The menus are designed, by default, to hide commands that you don't use regularly. How will you ever learn them if you can't even see them? Unhide them all. Taking the following steps in any one program, changes the setting in all of the applications. We'll use Word for our demonstration.

From the menu, choose Tools Customize and click the Options tab. Check both buttons at the top.

Removing Unwanted Menu Options and Toolbar Buttons

Want to remove certain toolbar buttons? No need to even open a dialog. Just hold the Alt key down and drag the button down into your spreadsheet or document.

Removing a menu options is a little harder. You have to have the Tools Customize dialog open when you do it.

Recover a Non-Docked Toolbar

If you drag a toolbar out of place, it is "not docked". For instance, Word's Standard toolbar looks like the graphic below when it's not in the right place.

To put it back to its default location, just double-click the title bar for the toolbar. This is true with virtually all Windows applications.

Change the Text Size on Toolbars and Menus

Oops! We can't do this through Microsoft Office customization. This must be done through the Desktop Properties of Windows. Right-click your desktop, and choose Properties. Go to the Appearance tab. Make changes to your settings there. Be careful not to use the same color text and background!

Restore Any Toolbar

If you have even one toolbar or menu showing, just right-click it and choose Customize. Go to the Toolbars tab, and make sure the toolbars you want are checked. If not, check them. If they're checked, then select the Standard toolbar (without unchecking it), and hit Restore. Confirm that you want to restore it. Do the same to each checked toolbar, including the menu bar. That should restore any menus or toolbars that are missing. If you have no toolbars showing, then you'll likely need to do a registry edit to recover them. See the specific application's troubleshooting steps.

Close All Files

Did you know you can close all the files you have open, all at once shot? Just hold the Shift key down while you access the File menu. Check out the new option there.