Customized toolbars defaulting

[rm1008]

When I go to the trouble of setting up customized toolbars, I will often
lose the whole customization through a crash, restart, or having to power
shutdown.

This has happened so often that I no longer bother trying. However,
customized toolbars are a really good feature.

Any fix?

Thanks, Rafael

 

[Clive Huggan]

You shouldn't lose customizations through crashing, Rafael, unless you're in
the middle of setting up a new one. And even then, you would only lose the
new features.

And you shouldn't be crashing anyway...

Care to tell us what version of Word and Mac OS you are using, including
updates, and if you're pre-OS X how much RAM you have allocated to Word?
And tell us *exactly* what you are doing when Word crashes? (There are two
sets of problems here; let's tackle them both.)

I may not be the person who helps you, since I'm in a time zone half a world
away, but whoever helps you will need more information.


Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe,
so my follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

--- SOME TIPS THAT MIGHT BE USEFUL ---

* WAIT FOR CONSIDERED ADVICE: If you post a question, keep re-visiting the
newsgroup for several days after the first response comes in. Sometimes it
takes a few responses before the best or complete solution is proposed;
sometimes you'll be asked for further information so that a better answer
can be provided. Good tips about getting the best out of posting are at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FindHelp/Posting.htm

* QUERY GOOGLE FIRST: Before posting your next question, search Google
Groups
(http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=group:*mac.office.word) --
the topic may have been comprehensively answered already.

* THE MS NEWS SERVER IS QUICKEST: If you connect directly to the Microsoft
news server (msnews.microsoft.com), you will see your replies within
minutes; going through your ISP's news server could take much longer, and
web-based access can also be slow -- up to several days. For settings for
the MS news server, see http://www.entourage.mvps.org

* POST TO THE NEWSGROUP TO GIVE YOUR FEEDBACK: Please post all comments or
follow-on questions to the newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
interested. If you need to send an e-mail to me directly (although that
would be exceptional), remove the uppercase letters from my address above.
E-mails with attachments are automatically rejected.

* YOUR VIEWS ARE WELCOME: If you know the answer, even a partial one, to a
question you see on this newsgroup, feel free to jump in and answer it --
there's no monopoly on answering here, and (except for an occasional visit
by someone with "Microsoft" or "Mac Business Unit" in their signature block)
we're all volunteers!

* COMING BACK PAYS DIVIDENDS: I've found no better way of improving my
knowledge of Word than visiting this newsgroup. Notes I've compiled,
incorporating ideas from this newsgroup and elsewhere (they also list other
sources of information about Word) are downloadable free at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/Bend/BendWord.htm

* BACK UP NOW: If anyone is still reading down this far, here's a question:
if your settings files were corrupted right now, would you have an
up-to-date backup? It's best to back up your Normal template and all your
Word settings files on a medium other than the internal hard drive and, if
you also want to protect against theft and fire, to store them in a
different building.
============================================================

 

[Rafael]

Hi Clive,

Word 2001, OS9.1, Pre-osX, 32,000 ram allocated for word.

I was using 9.2.2 but there were problems and I believe I can accomplish my
work on OS 9.1. Then again, I could be wrong. I was in a hurry at the time.

I haven't accessed word ng for a while. I got a lot of spam my first go at
NGs and I've finally figured out how to create a fake spamproof (I hope)
email address. So the customization problems occurred a while back.

*Exactly* what I was doing when Word crashed? I recall that it might not
have been word crashing, but a computer freeze or incident that forced me to
restart or power shut down, then boot up.

I may have to duplicate the incidents to give you proper particulars as to
just exactly I was doing when I lost customizations. I haven't done any
customization for a month or two, having become frustrated with losing well
worked out customizations.

If you have input from the facts I have given above, fine. If not, I will
set up new customizations and report back if and when the problem occurs
again.

Thank you for your response, Rafael

Bye the way. I'm glad to be back on NGs. Hi to Beth & Dayo, and to you Clive
who have also been a help to me.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks, Rafael. Comments inline below.

Hi Clive,

Word 2001, OS9.1, Pre-osX, 32,000 ram allocated for word.

If you're working on long or complex documents, my recommendation is as
follows:

If you have 192 megabytes, or less, of physical RAM installed in your Mac,
set "Preferred Size" to 48000K (= 48 MB). If you have more than 192
megabytes of RAM you can profitably set the preferred size as high as 80000K
(= 80 MB). If you have, say, 512 MB or more of RAM and you work on very
complex and/or graphics-rich Word documents, even 120,000K (= 120 MB) will
be beneficial, provided you don't operate other memory-hungry software at
the same time.

Word is such a hungry beast.

I was using 9.2.2 but there were problems and I believe I can accomplish my
work on OS 9.1. Then again, I could be wrong. I was in a hurry at the time.

I know the feeling -- no time to do anything but get work out of the door!
I've had that feeling non-stop for the past couple of months. It looks like
easing up now...

I *had* to move from 9.1 to 9.2.2 because I had bought a PowerBook that
would only run on 9.2.2, and I had a feeling the 9.2.2 was more flaky than
9.1 -- but nothing I could put my finger on specifically. On 9.1 I only had
crashes with Netscape Navigator, which was bad; with 9.2.2 and Navigator
removed, crashes were only every few weeks but more than with 9.1 if
Navigator had not been the cause.

Two weeks ago I bought Office 2004, which I'm very pleased with, and moved
from 9.2.2 to 10.3.4. I have yet to fall in love with OS X (lots of eye
candy, but real obstacles to some of my well-established work practices such
as keeping title bars of lots of collapsed folders on the screen, which is
not possible on OS X).

I haven't accessed word ng for a while. I got a lot of spam my first go at
NGs and I've finally figured out how to create a fake spamproof (I hope)
email address.

That should work. It's good that you have shown your real first name -- it
helps to distinguish you from all the anonymous people when you initiate a
further post; and if you have a significant problem at some stage some of
the experts that watch can come in with some background "feel" for what the
problem might be.

So the customization problems occurred a while back.

*Exactly* what I was doing when Word crashed? I recall that it might not
have been word crashing, but a computer freeze or incident that forced me to
restart or power shut down, then boot up.

I may have to duplicate the incidents to give you proper particulars as to
just exactly I was doing when I lost customizations. I haven't done any
customization for a month or two, having become frustrated with losing well
worked out customizations.

Download the notes on the way I use Word, titled "Bend Word to your Will",
free at http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/Bend/BendWord.htm (if you have
an earlier version it's still better to download it -- there have been some
significant improvements) and read the 4 pages or so following the heading
"Buttons, transferring between toolbars". There is some food for thought in
there.

The section starting with the heading "Backing up the Normal template, other
templates, and settings files" will show you which files to back up so you
can always retrieve a situation (when I make changes that take me more than
5 minutes to do, and in any case weekly, I back up these settings files).

There are also some useful notes under the heading "Configuring your Mac to
minimize problems in Word 2001", including the memory allocation
recommendations above.

Use the Find command to look for the headings, but make sure you read the
introductory section soon afterwards, so as to understand the way the notes
are structured.

If you have input from the facts I have given above, fine. If not, I will
set up new customizations and report back if and when the problem occurs
again.

Feedback like that is always valuable!

Thank you for your response, Rafael

Bye the way. I'm glad to be back on NGs. Hi to Beth & Dayo, and to you Clive
who have also been a help to me.

Good to hear from you again, Rafael!


Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe,
so my follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Hi Rafael,

Thought that might be you....

When you set up the custom toolbars, add an icon or shortcut for SaveAll.
After setting up a customization, hit SaveAll (or Quit) to ensure it saves
immediately to your Normal template. If you get a prompt "save changes to
Normal template" say yes. Then even if you crash you should not lose the
toolbars. Also, make sure that the little dropdown at the bottom of the
Tools | Customize dialog is set to Save in: Normal, not anything else.

Once they are saved in Normal, you might want to move them, but that's a
later step....

Dayo

 

[Rafael]

Thanks Dayo. I'll try it. Good to hear from you.

Rafael

 

[Clive Huggan]

Further to Dayo's excellent tip: an alternative that allows you to "Save
all" is to hold down the Shift key then File menu -> Save All.

And a little aside: one of the advantages of attaching a document to a
template other than Normal is that as a default you will be asked whether
you want to save the change to the template at the next Save operation, not
when you quit Word.

Clive
=========