Word 2003 Toolbars Change Location and Colors at Random

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geoff.usenet@tigercore.net - 21 Jan 2007 16:28 GMT

Hello,

We have about 1000 users, and about 50 or so are experiencing issues
with toolbars in Word randomly changing color when hovering the
mouse pointer over an icon, and the toolbar settings (positions)
randomly changing. These changes are as though the user has moved a
toolbar, but in reality, they have done nothing of the sort. The
changes happen very infrequently (some happen a few days after
resetting their positions, others take up to 3 weeks), and Word is
used every day by each user.

Functionality of the toolbars does not change; clicking Print still
prints, etc.

We are running Office 2003 Professional w/SP2 and the latest updates
as of this posting.

Some users have Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional, some users have 7.0
Standard. Some users have no Adobe other than Reader (which, to my
knowledge, does not insert toolbars into Word). Some users have
Hummingbird DM, others (most) don't.

The machines are all Dell PC's, and range from Optiplex GX270's,
GX280, GX620's. All Windows XP Professional w/SP2 and the latest
updates as of this posting.

All machines are actively scanned with McAfee VirusScan Enterprise
on a daily basis, and have been scanned for malicious software - 99%
of our users have "basic" user accounts, with very restricted
access.

Can anyone offer any insight as to why the toolbars might move
around at random? We have re-installed Office on several machines,
but the problem does eventually return. We have re-imaged several of
the machines too, but the problem does return.

We have tried restricting Normal.dot to read-only access, deleting
Normal.dot and have it re-created. We are currently testing Modify
access to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word, which is showing
promise... but this problem occurs at random and is very hard to
troubleshoot.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
Geoff

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Bob Buckland ?:-) - 22 Jan 2007 00:29 GMT

Hi Geoff,

Is it the whole toolbar that is moving or just icons on the toolbars? If icons on the toolbars change the setting in
Tools=>Customize to always display full menus makes a difference.

If it's the toolbars it could be an add-in that is 'muscling' in, in a different sequence.

===============
Hello,

We have about 1000 users, and about 50 or so are experiencing issues
with toolbars in Word randomly changing color when hovering the
mouse pointer over an icon, and the toolbar settings (positions)
randomly changing. These changes are as though the user has moved a
toolbar, but in reality, they have done nothing of the sort. The
changes happen very infrequently (some happen a few days after
resetting their positions, others take up to 3 weeks), and Word is
used every day by each user.

Functionality of the toolbars does not change; clicking Print still
prints, etc.

We are running Office 2003 Professional w/SP2 and the latest updates
as of this posting.

Some users have Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional, some users have 7.0
Standard. Some users have no Adobe other than Reader (which, to my
knowledge, does not insert toolbars into Word). Some users have
Hummingbird DM, others (most) don't.

The machines are all Dell PC's, and range from Optiplex GX270's,
GX280, GX620's. All Windows XP Professional w/SP2 and the latest
updates as of this posting.

All machines are actively scanned with McAfee VirusScan Enterprise
on a daily basis, and have been scanned for malicious software - 99%
of our users have "basic" user accounts, with very restricted
access.

Can anyone offer any insight as to why the toolbars might move
around at random? We have re-installed Office on several machines,
but the problem does eventually return. We have re-imaged several of
the machines too, but the problem does return.

We have tried restricting Normal.dot to read-only access, deleting
Normal.dot and have it re-created. We are currently testing Modify
access to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word, which is showing
promise... but this problem occurs at random and is very hard to
troubleshoot.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
Geoff >>

Signature

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Reply to this Message

Geoff - 22 Jan 2007 03:01 GMT

"Bob Buckland ?:-\)" <75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com>
wrote in news:uRm4IvbPHHA.3552@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl:

> Hi Geoff,
>
[quoted text clipped - 50 lines]
> Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
> Geoff >>

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your input. It is the entire toolbar(s), like Standard, or
Formatting, etc, that move around, not just the icons (though in some
instances, Save, Print, and other icons become disabled for no reason,
but that's a different matter).

We do believe it's an incompatability between some other software, the
problem is that not all machines have anything in common except for Word
2003 Professional, Windows XP and all the patches. There are a few
homegrown applications, but they aren't supposed to be interacting with
Word (or Office) in any way...

At first I though it was a conflict with Acrobat 6.0 Pro, to which we
promptly applied the latest updates for Acrobat, but then new instances
of the problem started appearing that didn't have Acrobat 6.0 Pro, only
7.0 Reader.

I try to get updates from users each Wednesday, to report back to my boss
on Thursday afternoons, and so far, the registry permission I mentioned
in my original post seems to be holding (knock on wood)...

Thanks,
Geoff

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