Floating Toolbar in a Table

[Idaho Word Man]

One of the ladies I work with (not an expert Word user) just had something
totally bizarre happen in a Word document. I wasn't able to help her get rid
of it, so I'm curious whether any of you have seen this glitch before or know
what caused it.

She was editing text in a table, when a small floating toolbar that
contained the 9 justification options for table cells "appeared" in the
middle of the table. This toolbar had five dots instead of a title. I could
drag it to a different position, where the title would say "Cell A." But as
soon as we tried to do anything else in the document, the toolbar would jump
back to its original position with the 5 dots in the title area.

Right-clicking on this little floating toolbar did nothing, and neither
mouse commands nor keyboard commands would do anything anywhere else in the
document. We could not place the cursor in the document.

We couldn't do anything to get rid of it or edit the document with it
present. I would have liked to have played with it a little longer, but she
clicked the close button, and that worked, even though none of the menus had
worked. When we reopened the document our mystery toolbar was gone.

Have any of you seen anything like that before? (I'm betting that one of the
MVPs will know exactly what it is.)

Thanks,

Fred

P.S. We use Word 2003 and Windows XP Professional.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This sounds like a "tearoff toolbar." Certain portions of certain toolbars
can be dragged off the toolbar to become floating toolbars on their own.
This one is torn off the Tables and Borders toolbar. You should be able to
click the X in the upper right corner of the toolbar to close it.

 

[Idaho Word Man]

There was no X in the corner. I didn't think tearoff toolbars would lock the
document the way this did.