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MS Office Forum / Word / Menus and Toolbars / March 2006Hiding Toolbar Options
Help! I need to be able to "hide" (suppress) the chevrons/arrows at the end of each and every toolbar in Office XP -- particularly in Word 2003. The entire toolbar is visible, so hiding the arrows wouldn't affect being able to use any of the icons, but Word insists on adding the arrows, with the drop-down option being just "Add or Remove Buttons". We use numerous customized toolbars, with lots of customized tools, so these repeated arrows produce a lot of unnecessary clutter -- and take up space that could be better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank you! I'm a little confused. I find that if full menus are displayed (Tools - Customize - Options - Always show full menus), then then chevrons display only if the window is too narrow to display the whole toolbar. Hence, for me they're always invisible. The small downward pointing arrows cannot be suppressed.  SignatureHerb Tyson MS MVP http://www.herbtyson.com Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along. > Help! I need to be able to "hide" (suppress) the chevrons/arrows at the > end [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > produce a lot of unnecessary clutter -- and take up space that could be > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank you! Yes, full menus are displayed, and the toolbars are displayed in their entirety. However, there are arrows on the far right that, when clicked, show the "Add or Remove Buttons" option. We have 3-4 small customized toolbars on each line of four lines of toolbars (since they each contain related customized macros), the repeated arrows not only take up a lot of unnecessary space, they create clutter. Besides, our users do not need the option to add/remove the buttons. [Even if they did, they could accomplish the same thing via the Tools/Customize menu.] Is there no way to disable this function????? [These particular arrows were not visible on earlier editions of Office; as far as I know, they didn't start appearing until XP.] Thanks! > I'm a little confused. I find that if full menus are displayed (Tools - > Customize - Options - Always show full menus), then then chevrons display [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > produce a lot of unnecessary clutter -- and take up space that could be > > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank you! There is no built-in way to hide/disable the arrows and that functionality. I suppose that one could write an add-in for Word to create a new kind of toolbar, but that would be costly and time consuming. If you display the toolbars as floating objects rather than attached to the top/sides/bottom of the Word window, the arrows change locations, and disappear from the row containing the tools themselves. But, then you're also confronted with a title bar for each toolbar, which consumes even more screen real estate. One way to avoid thinking of the arrows in Word 2002/XP as looking large and obtrusive is to look at their counterparts in Word 2003. ;-) In Word 2003, they're much larger, the idea being (I believe) that they were so small in Word 2002/XP that people overlooked them. <smirk> SignatureHerb Tyson MS MVP http://www.herbtyson.com Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along. > Yes, full menus are displayed, and the toolbars are displayed in their > entirety. However, there are arrows on the far right that, when clicked, [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] >> > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank >> > you! Yes, we had considered the floating toolbars, but indeed that took even more space. We typically have at least four full rows of toolbars for our apps -- some of us five or six -- and all buttons need to be visible. So space is at a premium! Especially for those of us with "aging eyes" who need the 600x800 resolution!! :) I may have misspoken about the version that we're using. We were just upgraded to Office 2003 (a couple of days ago) -- but everyone here has been calling it the 03 "flavor" of XP (ie that both 2002 and 2003 were XP). I'm gathering from your comment that this is incorrect -- I apologize for that! I've been using Word'02 (at home) for quite some time, but definitely noticed the arrows there too. But you're right, they're even more pronounced in 03! Since I wrote my original question yesterday, a couple of other issues have surfaced; perhaps you could give me some additional insight on them? First, even though the settings in Tools/Customize are to show full menus, apparently that doesn't carry over to the toolbars -- when Word is first opened, the icons often are "compacted" so there are only 3 rows of toolbars (necessitating the chevrons along with the arrows). Even after dragging the toolbars so there are four rows -- and ensuring that there aren't any that extend too far over in the right margin -- and ensuring that the normal.dot is re-saved while exiting -- on the next instance of opening Word a) the toolbars are compacted again and b) the toolbars are rearranged back onto three rows. I've repeatedly tried the registry key fix (renaming/removing the Data key) -- which has worked well in previous version of Word. I've also tried deleting the normal.dot file and starting from scratch there. And numerous combinations of all of the above. Can you advise re a good way to a) keep the toolbars fully opened and not scrunched into three rows and b) keep them where they're placed (assuming that normal.dot is re-saved upon exiting)? Any insights would certainly be appreciated -- it has been really frustrating this morning trying to get these toolbars to behave!! Thank you so much! > There is no built-in way to hide/disable the arrows and that functionality. > I suppose that one could write an add-in for Word to create a new kind of [quoted text clipped - 50 lines] > >> > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank > >> > you! And btw, I don't have the full version of Acrobat installed -- only the Reader software -- so I don't have any of the Acrobat toolbars referenced in other threads in this discussion group. > Yes, we had considered the floating toolbars, but indeed that took even more > space. We typically have at least four full rows of toolbars for our apps -- [quoted text clipped - 84 lines] > > >> > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank > > >> > you! In addition to "Always show full menus," there is a check box for "Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows." If the "compacting" involves other toolbars than these, and Word is not saving your settings, you may need to rebuild a Registry key. SignatureSuzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit. > Yes, we had considered the floating toolbars, but indeed that took even more > space. We typically have at least four full rows of toolbars for our apps -- [quoted text clipped - 84 lines] > > >> > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank > > >> > you! As far as I know you cannot remove the Toolbar Options button but I think the real problem here is a design issue. 12 or 16 or more separate small toolbars is, IMHO, bad design, and I simply don't believe that they all need to be visible at the same time. Do you (or your users) really do so many different specialist actions? And really need them all a single click away all the time? And need them clustered in such small groups? The separate toolbars would seem to be obvious candidates for popups on a single master toolbar. Alternatively commands needed so close at hand could perhaps be keyboard shortcuts which don't take up any real estate at all. -- Enjoy, Tony > Yes, we had considered the floating toolbars, but indeed that took even more > space. We typically have at least four full rows of toolbars for our apps -- [quoted text clipped - 92 lines] > > >> > better used by our tools. How can I suppress the arrows????? Thank > > >> > you! Thanks. I've rebuilt the registry Data key numerous times. I've deleted the normal.dot and let the system rebuild it also. Yes, our process involves several custom toolbars, other than the Standard and Formatting toolbars; containing numerous customized macros for our specific processes. And yes, it is essential to have several toolbars so our users can easily have the set of commands that they need for the phase of the project that they're currently working on. (And, on the other hand, they can easily hide any that may not be needed at the moment. With fewer toolbars, it's more difficult for the individual user to have a pre-packaged set of toolbars for their specific needs.) We've used this design for a number of years and, for our purposes, it has been extemely effective. Yes, some of our infrequent commands (with customized macros) are on menu-type toolbar buttons, but for the frequently-used ones, it's definitely more efficient to have them just one click away. BTW, the VBA code behind our customized macros takes over 200 pages to print, so this is not a small project. BUT even when I've tried combining some of the toolbars so they're longer -- but having fewer buttons than the screen width at 800x600 on a non-wide-screen display, so they should be able to be displayed in full, without issues there -- the settings STILL do not stay. I thought it might be a matter of having too many rows -- but even when there's only two rows of toolbars, the system still compacts them into one row, even after I've rearranged them where they should be, and rebuilt the registry key and normal.dot again. This afternoon I discovered the msoBarNoMove and msoBarNoCustomize commands -- but results with them were unreliable. Yes, the toolbars became immovable; however, they did not retain the settings where I had placed them before running these commands -- but insisted on compacting them (and rearranging them) before making them immmovable. It has been a really frustrating day! At this point, I'd be happy to just get the settings to be the same from one session to the next (in a location customized by the user, not by Word, randomly), so the user doesn't have to "play hide and seek" each time to find the tools. Note: We haven't had this issue with any previous version of Word. Yes, the toolbars would rearrange themselves occasionally, but we were always able to get them to behave by rebuilding the registry key and/or normal.dot. Any additional insights are definitely appreciated! > As far as I know you cannot remove the Toolbar Options button but I think > the real problem here is a design issue. [quoted text clipped - 150 lines] > Thank > > > >> > you! So the real issue is that commandbar customization doesn't stick with 2003. I can believe that - there do seem to be some inconsistencies - but cannot offer any specific help unfortunately. What, very loosely, can happen at Word start up is that the various documents and templates and addins that open up do not always open up in the same order (or, at least, they may open in a predictable order but the processing which then takes place is not user-sequenceable) - there seems to be some sort of multithreading in operation. If you have any toolbar definitions which conflict, Word applies its own set of rules to resolve the conflicts. Depending on the order of processing, conflicts are not always resolved in the same way - indeed the same ones may not even arise every time. What can then happen is that the result of what has happened at start up is saved so that next time it may be different. What I understand may help is to use "OnTime" to create a slight delay in the running of code which positions toolbars but I don't know of any way bar some trial and error to get what you want. -- Enjoy, Tony > Thanks. I've rebuilt the registry Data key numerous times. I've deleted the > normal.dot and let the system rebuild it also. Yes, our process involves [quoted text clipped - 194 lines] > > Thank > > > > >> > you! Hi, I'm fairly new to Word VBA so I apologise if there are aspects of this I haven't thought through well enough, but have you considered disabling all the built in Word Toolbars and building your own using user forms? This would give you greater control over their size, position, content, colour coding etc. You could also have them change size according to screen resolution by using, for example: If System.HorizontalResolution > 800 Then wide_user_form.Show Else: narrow_user_form.Show End If in the Document Open() subroutine. Possible problems: You may be stuck with the Caption Bar at the top of each form which would take up space, although there may be a way to change this (Any ideas - Windows API?) Document size would probably increase. It would be a lot of work - although it would avoid all the messing round with trying to get Word to behave consistently. What do you think? I'm going to try it on a project I'm working on. I'll let you know if there are any useful things I learn on the way. I'd be grateful for feedback on this idea. Good luck! Dominic |
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