Customising a drop down menu in Word 2003

[John]

My File menu in W2003 has out of date commands that I put on it years ago. I have tried to remove them (with Customize open, of course). They go away but come straight back. I have tried dragging and right click then Delete.

Obviously, this problem does not stop me doing things. But it is annoying.
I would appreciate any help.

Background
I moved from W2002 to W2003 and managed to transfer my old normal.dot which has lots of Autotext etc.
I have now made several 'headed paper' templates (for use in diverse communities of interest) and have recorded macros to open docs based on these. I have put buttons on the Standard toolbar. I mention this to show that Customize has worked OK on something.

John

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?Sm9obg==?=,

Generally, when I see a problem like this, my first thought is that the
customizations have been saved in some container other than the one that is
currently selected (that Word is saving the changes you're making now to). This
happens more with VBA than when working in the User Interface, but it's still a
possibility.

For the UI, the most common problem is multiple copies of Normal.dot. If you
search you machine for Normal.dot how many copies do you turn up? And if you
rename all but one of them, and then start Word, are these entries there? And
if you delete one now, then make sure to save changes to Normal.dot if Word
prompts you to do so, do they "stick"?

My File menu in W2003 has out of date commands that I put on it years ago. I

have tried to remove them (with Customize open, of course). They go away but
come straight back. I have tried dragging and right click then Delete.

Obviously, this problem does not stop me doing things. But it is annoying.
I would appreciate any help.

Background
I moved from W2002 to W2003 and managed to transfer my old normal.dot which has lots of Autotext etc.
I have now made several 'headed paper' templates (for use in diverse

communities of interest) and have recorded macros to open docs based on these.
I have put buttons on the Standard toolbar. I mention this to show that
Customize has worked OK on something.
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[John]

My thanks to Cindy.
I checked and found just the one appearance of Normal.dot as a file. It appeared in Recent as a shortcut

When I have removed the items, I close Customize. The File menu disappears. Then if I drop down the file menu, the items are back again. If I close Word, it saves Normal.dot. When I restart, the unwanted items are there

Some changes to the menu do stick: for instance, I moved Page Setup up the menu

I cannot find how to make a new menu with all that I want on it. Toolbar yes, menu no. If I could do that, I would just delete the present File menu. I would have to use & to set shortcut keys

John

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi John,

I checked and found just the one appearance of Normal.dot as a file. It appeared in Recent as a shortcut.

When I have removed the items, I close Customize. The File menu disappears. Then if I drop down the file menu, the items are back again. If I close Word, it saves Normal.dot. When I restart, the unwanted items are there.

Some changes to the menu do stick: for instance, I moved Page Setup up the menu.

I cannot find how to make a new menu with all that I want on it. Toolbar yes, menu no. If I could do that, I would just delete the present File menu. I would have to use & to set shortcut keys.

Have you tried Tools/Customize/Toolbars - RESET?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[John]

Thank you very much indeed, Cindy.

Reset fixed it instantly. I had seen the Reset button in the Customize dialog box, and reckoned it would reset toolbars (not what I wanted). I had failed to notice the Reset at the top of the right-click sub-menu

You may now feel as I did on Monday, when I showed a friend what the Zoom box allows. He and his wife had always written in 24 point so that they could read it on the Mac screen, then changed to 12 point for printing

Again, my thank
Joh

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi John,

You may now feel as I did on Monday, when I showed a friend what the Zoom box allows. He and his wife had always written in 24 point so that they could read it on the Mac screen, then changed to 12 point for printing!

Love it <bg> Glad the suggestion worked for you - I wasn't certain it would!

Cindy Meister