Hi Peter,

We have a program our customers use which automates Word to perform mail
merges and over time two problems surfaced; one was that sometimes after the
merge the menu bar and toolbars would be missing, and the other was that
sometimes the menu bar and toolbars would be there but would be inactive
until Word's window state was changed (e.g. by minimising and maximising
Word).

The problem of the missing toolbars seemed to happen if Word "thought" the
merge had been interrupted - possibly by some types of error, or by fill-in
fields.

In our code we set the .Visible property of the application object to true
before starting the merge to get around that.

We used the .Activate method of the application object to get around the
problem of the inactive toolbars.

I didn't write the code but I've just read through it and the order that we
used is:
  Set the app visible.
  Activate the app.
  Perform the merge (and maybe do other stuff).
  Activate the app.

Not sure if both activations are necessary or whether this was "belt and
braces".

Regards.

Ed

Hello again,

I should have been a bit clearer about when the menu bar and toolbars would
go missing. This would only happen with an "interruption" to the merge when
Word was not yet visible. If Word was already visible we would not get the
problem.

Cheers.

Ed