Word 2003 - Work menu

[Guest]

How do I REMOVE a file name from the Work menu? I read somewhere how to put
them on there (with file open, choose Work/Add to work menu), but I can't
find even that information anywhere in help, nor any mention of the existence
of the Work menu.

 

[Guest]

Hello MKT-Chicago,

Press Ctrl + Alt + -

Your cursor will change to a thick black line. Choose Work and click on the
field to be removed.

There is a full explanation on:
http://addbalance.com/word/workmenu.htm#PageStart

Judith

 

[Guest]

You can remove items from the Work menu by typing the CMD, OPT and - keys
(that's the minus key from the main keyboard), then selecting the item from
the menu. This works for any menu item in Word so be very careful!

 

[Guest]

JudithJubilee-
Thanks very much, that sure does it! But although the page at the link you
provided has "Work Menu in Microsoft Word" as an entry in a long list of
links, it's one of two that's not hyperlinked to anything.

MKT-Chicago

 

[Guest]

Carol-

Thanks very much. It sounds like you're a Mac user, but the directions
exactly parallel the Windows ones provided by JudithJubilee. Thanks also for
the warning that the technique also works on other menus - I didn't know you
could remove entries from normal menus.

MKT-Chicago

 

[Guest]

Opps! Try this:

http://www.addbalance.com/word/workmenu.htm and scroll down.

 

[Guest]

Aha - I didn't realize how much further the page went! (I took the
digression to a list of historical events as being the beginning of the end
of the page, silly me.)

That site looks like a treasure trove.

Thanks again.
MKT-Chicago

 

[Charles Kenyon]

http://addbalance.com/word/workmenu.htm
Be careful of the keyboard command because it will remove any command from
any menu.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Guest]

I use Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac on Macs running OS X 10.4.7. I have
happily used Work menus for years. Suddenly I lost the ability to remove
items from the Work menu on my G4 laptop. Astounded, I tried it on my office
desktop, and it still worked (I think it was command-option-minus). But sure
enough, a few weeks later, after I'd automatically updated Office, it stopped
working on my desktop as well. One of the updates seems to have disabled the
feature, but I can't reenable it. I cannot delete any items in my Work menu,
making it nearly useless: both Work menus are now far too long and include
documents I completed months ago. I've tried various other key combinations
in case the combination somehow changed (control-option-minus,
control-alt-minus, command-alt-minus, you name it), but nothing works. These
other commands just move the highlighting between the top and bottom items on
the Work menu.

I also can't get a minus to remove anything from any other menu, either, but
I never used that function anyway.

Can anyone suggest a way to re-enable the command or an alternative command
to remove items from the Work menu?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Why does your subject line say Word 2003 (windows version) when you are
using Word 2004 on a Mac? Such typos can create great confusion.

Anyhow, this is a known issue on the Mac--I think one of the Universal
Access commands in System Preferences overrides cmd-option-minus. Here's a
good explanation:
<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/browse_frm/
thread/75da70f31d369951/b9a9df06e9453349>

For future reference,
See here for Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups for MacWord, MacExcel,
and other MS programs for the Mac:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>

It's hard to tell when a problem is Mac-specific--in general, if you want to
know how to do something, either the general or Mac-specific groups will
work. If something is going wrong, try the Mac groups first.

I'm guessing that you updated the OS at the same time as you updated Office,
and Apple might have turned on some Access features by default in a recent
update--my VoiceOver came on randomly and the computer began explaining what
I was doing.

 

[Guest]

Daiya,

I do appreciate your response. I posted in the Word 2003 forum because I
couldn't *find* the 2004 for Mac forum; one of the links you gave me below
worked. Thanks.

Anyway, I've returned so that anyone else who comes to the wrong forum as I
did will get the discouraging I'm afraid these solutions don't seem to
work anymore. I found what looked like some good answers in the links you
gave, and I tried them all. option-command-8 will give me a minus sign
cursor--which disappears when I try to use it on the Work menu. Another link
gave me Macros to remove items from the Work menu. I finally asked my
husband, who works in Visual Basic and could analyze these but hadn't known
enough about Word to write one himself, why they didn't work.

The answer? He found that the "Delete Item from Work Menu" command simply
doesn't exist anymore on any of the three Macs we have between us. Turning
the cursor to a minus sign won't do anything as a result, and a macro can't
get you to a command that seems not to exist anymore.

I do appreciate your help. I posted here because I was trying *not* to
invest hours and hours in solving a fairly minor problem. Hours later, of
course I've had to conclude that we can't solve it, and I can't use the Work
menu because I can't remove items. Another suggestion on a different forum
was to remove Work menu items one by one from the Library file the machine
keeps for Word, but we could never find the list when we opened the file in
TextEdit.

I'll go post this in the proper place as well. Maybe there is something my
husband is missing here, but as he is a professional program (though he
doesn't work with Word much), I suspect that somewhere between Microsoft and
the Mac OS something went wrong. Perhaps in a future update it will be fixed.

Best,
NGD

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There may have been a "Delete Item from Work Menu" command on Macs, but on
PCs, Ctrl+Alt+Hyphen (not minus) is assigned to
ToolsCustomizeRemoveMenuShortcut.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

No, it's the same command name on the Mac. She posted (different name) on
the MacWord group and I just answered over there.

I'm not sure whether cmd-option-hyphen vs. cmd-option-minus is a Mac
difference or not, since I don't have a number pad on the laptop. Our help
definitely says "minus", that may just be an error, though. I guess it is
the hyphen.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi NGD,

Apparently you didn't try the answer in the link I gave you before posting
again, so it's a good thing I explained it verbally over in the MacWord
group.

It is true that the solutions you list don't work--I don't know who thought
they would, they all sound wrong to me (except the macro, not enough
information to know whether it is wrong).

I think instead of realizing that I linked you to a specific post with the
first link, you read that as a suggestion to do a search and got all kinds
of random guesses--but apparently, not the right answer, although it's been
asked and answered the same way several times.

The usual answer: Turn off Zoom in System Preferences | Universal
Access--the command to Zoom In is overriding the cmd-option-minus in Word.

Daiya

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

[MacWord 2004--shortcut to remove from Work menu doesn't work]

The usual answer: Turn off Zoom in System Preferences | Universal
Access--the command to Zoom In is overriding the cmd-option-minus in Word.

Whoops, I mean the command to Zoom Out is the problem. Must keep the
archives accurate!

PS. NGD, please do all follow-up on the MacWord group, no need to reply
here.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the thought, but on a Mac, we don't have RemoveMenuShortcut either.

I've found a radical solution: I deleted all my preferences. I now have a
virgin Work Menu.

I will now spend the day restoring my preferences. . . .

Best,
NGD

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Did you even *look* at the solution I suggested? which is to turn off Zoom
in System Preferences | Universal Access. Did you check back for an answer
to your post in the MacWord group before taking the radical solution?

The Mac *does* have the command Suzanne listed (you repeat the wrong name,
which suggests you were looking for the wrong thing), and I don't believe
you when you say *your* Mac doesn't have it, because you can't really remove
hard-coded commands from Word. Everyone else with this problem has found
the simple answer above works--I don't know what is happening on your
machine, but without specific confirmation, I really doubt that it's
anything as exceedingly unusual as you seem to think.

I'm really surprised that it takes you a day to restore preferences. You
also just wiped the checkboxes in Tools | AutoCorrect, by the way, so be
sure to go back there and reset those as well. Custom AutoCorrect entries
are fine, it's just the checkboxes in those four dialogs that are stored in
prefs.

 

[Guest]

Daiya,

If you are upset because you think you wasted your time replying, I assure
you: you did not. I took each bit separately, from your first suggestion
through your links to hunting through the Mactopia groups, and I tried
everything on both my office computer and my home laptop. I forgot to mention
that turning off Universal Access didn't help; by the time I'd replied, I'd
spent so much time on the other suggestions that I'd forgotten that one. Nor
did command-option-eight to turn off Zoom, nor command-option-hyphen instead
of command-option-minus. A few things, we also tried on my husband's
computer. Oddly, the Macro that we installed from the Mactopia newsgroup
suggestions seems to have worked on his computer when he restarted Word; I
have no explanation why it doesn't work on my own machines despite repeated
restarts.

I looked in Mactopia repeatedly. I didn't actually take my radical solution
on purpose; I ended up having to delete my preferences because (as I posted
to the Mactopia group), I tried removing the Work menu and reinstalling it,
and the reinstallation didn't work. I then reinstalled Word because I had
lost the entire Work menu, and I had played around with several other
commands and was afraid I might have messed something else up.

I do know that I wiped my AutoCorrect and AutoFormat with my other
preferences, and I've restored those; Check Spelling takes longer because I
have a lot of specialized words, so I do that gradually. "Spend the rest of
the day" was a joke; I was trying some self-effacing humor because I was
sorry I'd posted in the wrong item.

I just thought that if I came here looking for answers, someone else might,
and so I'd put all the time I'd invested to good use by reporting my results.
I do appreciate your help, and I'm sorry I have antagonized you. I'll try to
confine myself to Mactopia from now on. (And yes, I see that you've posted
there, and I will go there too and look.)

Best,
NGD

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi NGD,

I'm just exasperated thinking of *you* wasting all that time, and I still
think unnecessarily. I think posting back after my first post and saying
"what you offered didn't work; what should I try now" would have let you
work through your problem with a lot less frustration, blind alleys, and
time invested, even if waiting for a response seemed slower than going it
alone.

By the way you phrase your comments, I'm still not entirely sure the failed
solution wasn't due to miscommunication rather than a problem on your
machine, but we can sort that on the MacWord group.

And yes, I think your posts, and mine too, will be valuable in the archives.

Daiya