Word 2003 - Customised Toolbars

[Martin Ibbotson]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to raise this point.......
however -

I'm using Office 2003 on a laptop running Windows XP Home (+SP2)

Now and again, when I open up Word 2003 it looses my personal (or
customised) toolbars (this also happens occasionally with Excel 2003 as
well).

My main question is - where and how does Word/Office keep your
personal/customised toolbars and settings? I'd like to back them up if
possible so that I don't have to go through the whole laboriuous process
of setting them up again, every time it happens.

As a subsidiary question - does anyone have any idea of the
circunstances when Word might loose your personalised settings? I

This is not a regular occurrance, but it is anoying when it does happen.

Thanks for any help......

Martin

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Martin

Unless you have told Word otherwise, your toolbar settings will be saved in
normal.dot. The safer way might be to create a template for yourself (File >
New. On the New file dialog, choose to create a new template.) When you use
Tools > Customize to customize your toolbars, make sure you have chosen to
save the customizations in your own template.

You can now use your template as a global template or add-in. When you do
that, the toolbars will be available to all documents you are working on. To
invoke the add-in, do Tools > Templates and Add-ins and click Add. Or, your
template in the folder shown at Tools > Options > File Locations > Start Up.
If it is saved there, it will load automatically every time you run Word.

Excel saves toolbars using quite a different model. You might ask in one of
the Excel newsgroups for advice there.

Why you are losing your toolbars is not clear. The fact that it's also
happening to your Excel toolbars makes me wonder if the laptop is sometimes
connected to a corporate network. The administrators of IT departments
sometimes force a new normal.dot on you when you log into the network, or
when they want you to have a new one. This is a very sad practice and ill
advised. If this might be the cause of your problems, then you might have a
chat to them to see what they're doing.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Martin Ibbotson]

Thanks, Shauna.

I've done both - hoping to be bullet-proof..... time will tell!

Thanks,
Martin