No Office Toolbar in 2003??!!

[Guest]

Paul,

Nice app but it is not a suitable substitute for the shortcut bar. Not even
close.

Also your motto: Control the things you can and Don't Worry about the
things you can't control.

Nice "Franklin Covey" type quotes but again, this is a product which is
bought by consumers and I expect MORE functionality, compatibility and
usefulness out of each succeeding generation of software product, not less.

I will stop rambling on about this now, I believe I've made my point and the
marketplace/consumers will either compel Microsoft to bring the product back
or someone else will make a product similar to it that will appeal to enough
folks so the product continues to be developed and improved.

Nospam

Try this program it works just like the office SCB except it is added to the
Right Click Menu
http://www.pitrinec.com/pmeindex.htm
Perfect menu adds functionality to Right Click Menu's. You can
create replacement menus or add on menus to add additional commands to Right
Click Menus. You can add application shortcuts. It can be used to create key
sequence commands to save files to a default location.


--
Paul Ballou
MVP Office
http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/templates
http://office.microsoft.com/home

Control the things you can and Don't Worry about the things you can't
control.

Milly,

They didn't talk to me nor to thousands of others upset over this issue
There are multiple postings on this group, inother MS groups and all
over the net about this.

There is currently NO private app or Microsoft OS that provides the same
functionality that the office toolbar provided.

As a work-around I am using the toolbar from Office XP but again, 32-bit
icons (like Office 2003 icons) look quite crappy in it.

Thanks,

Nospam

"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"

wrote in message news:%23bhfKkY%[email protected]...

I think the answer you have already gotten (toolbars included in the
supported OS versions) is about the only answer you will get.

Otherwise, the answer is, it is Microsoft's program and they decided

to
drop

it after customer interviews.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, Nospam asked:

| Eric,
|
| Thank you for the info. OK the app is 32 bit but nevertheless I was
| onto something about 32 bit and Eirc provided the more technical
| answer that the toolbar does not support 32-bit images. Is that WHY
| it was discontinued in Office 2003, over a stupid issue like that?
| Because for Office 2003 32 bit icons were developed compared to
| previous versions of Office and Microsoft simply did not want to
| develop the toolar to adequately accomodate 32 bit images? I have
| not seen one post explaining the WHY it was discontinued.
|
| Thanks,
|
| Nospam
|
| || I think you're mixing up your bits. ;-)
||
|| The Office toolbar is a 32 bit application. The terminology "32 bit
|| application") refers to the instruction set that the code uses.
||
|| However, you are likely correct in noting that this application did
|| not support 32bit images (which has nothing to do with the
|| instruction set; it simple refers to how many bytes are used to
|| describe each color in an image).
||
|| Cutting this toolbar had absolutely nothing to do with its lack of
|| support for high color images.
||
|| --
|| Thanks,
||
|| Eric Lawrence
|| Program Manager
|| Assistance and Worldwide Services
||
|| This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
|| rights.
||
||
|| ||| Cerridwen,
|||
||| The Toolbar Portion of the app itself is a 16 bit application,
||| unlike all the apps within Office, which of course are 32 bit.
||| That's why it has trouble with the new 32 bit icons.
|||
||| Proof: Look at an Office 2003 icon (such as Outlook) in the
||| Windows Start menu. Compare the color depth and clarity of those
||| icons to the identical icons in the Shortcut Bar. The Start Menu
||| is part of the 32 (or 64) bit OS while the Shortcut Bar is itself a
||| 16 bit app. If the Shortcut Bar was truly a 32 bit app then the
||| icons would look identical.
|||
||| Nospam
|||
||| |||| Nospam wrote:
||||| I know why Microsoft did not include the toolbar, it's because
||||| it's a 16 bit app and they did not want to spend the precious few
||||| hours it would take to update the code to 32 bit.
|||||
||||| I agree with Joe, Microsoft made a stupid decision to exclude it.
|||||
||||| Nospam
||||
|||| HUH?! You don't have a clue what you're on about, do you?! Office
|||| has always been 32-bit, for as long as there have been 32-bit OSes.

 

[Beth Melton]

I've found the most compelling feedback is specific details on why it
should be reconsidered or how they could modify the Windows toolbars
to integrate the desired functionality.

See my post in this same thread asking for this type of information.


--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

There are a TON of alternatives to the Office Shortcut Bar. Bob Buckland
posted a great list of them to this group a while ago; you can probably find
it in the Google archive. Honestly, there are superior alternatives for
EVERY function that the OSB provided in previous Office releases.

If you like tiny things with lots of power, I'll make another pitch for the
tiny SlickRun tool I wrote (no warranty freeware) which you can find here:
www.bayden.com/slickrun/. This tool (combined with the Office MagicWord
pack on that page) can be configured to do just about everything the Office
shortcut bar could do.

There are a ton of apps which even look more like the OSB, and if you like
to use the mouse, you may want to explore them.

--
Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[John Ski]

Subject: Re: No Office Toolbar in 2003??!!

From: "Eric Lawrence [MSFT]" (e-mail address removed)
Date: 2/24/2004 6:10 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <Oo#Asty#[email protected]>

There are a TON of alternatives to the Office Shortcut Bar. Bob Buckland
posted a great list of them to this group a while ago; you can probably find
it in the Google archive. Honestly, there are superior alternatives for
EVERY function that the OSB provided in previous Office releases.

If you like tiny things with lots of power, I'll make another pitch for the
tiny SlickRun tool I wrote (no warranty freeware) which you can find here:
www.bayden.com/slickrun/. This tool (combined with the Office MagicWord
pack on that page) can be configured to do just about everything the Office
shortcut bar could do.

There are a ton of apps which even look more like the OSB, and if you like
to use the mouse, you may want to explore them.

--
Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Oh for God's sake, Eric, just listen to your self for a minute! This should be
a non-issue. The OSB works fine. We shouldn't have to pay US$100's for an
"upgrade" and then waste valuable time trying to find a 3rd Party utility, that
"does just about everything the OSB could do" to replace something that
shouldn't have been removed in the 1st place. Stop trying to justify the
unjustifiable. MS should admit they screwed up and put up an Office Update for
2003 with a compatible OSB in it...period.

Cheers,
John
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
***Arthur C. Clarke***

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

I completely disagree but that is what civilized discourse is all about. I
DON'T think they made a mistake, they just removed some bloat from Office to
use the built-in toolbars that Windows has.

Y'all complained about bloat? So, Microsoft removes some of it (if you
installed the Office XP toolbar, you would have noticed that it takes 45 MB
or so) and then you mewl and whine that "your" favorite "Bloat" was removed.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, John Ski asked:

|| Subject: Re: No Office Toolbar in 2003??!!
|| From: "Eric Lawrence [MSFT]" (e-mail address removed)
|| Date: 2/24/2004 6:10 PM Eastern Standard Time
|| Message-id: <Oo#Asty#[email protected]>
||
|| There are a TON of alternatives to the Office Shortcut Bar. Bob
|| Buckland posted a great list of them to this group a while ago; you
|| can probably find it in the Google archive. Honestly, there are
|| superior alternatives for EVERY function that the OSB provided in
|| previous Office releases.
||
|| If you like tiny things with lots of power, I'll make another pitch
|| for the tiny SlickRun tool I wrote (no warranty freeware) which you
|| can find here: www.bayden.com/slickrun/. This tool (combined with
|| the Office MagicWord
|| pack on that page) can be configured to do just about everything the
|| Office shortcut bar could do.
||
|| There are a ton of apps which even look more like the OSB, and if
|| you like
|| to use the mouse, you may want to explore them.
||
|| --
|| Thanks,
||
|| Eric Lawrence
|| Program Manager
|| Assistance and Worldwide Services
||
|| This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
|| rights.
||
| Oh for God's sake, Eric, just listen to your self for a minute! This
| should be a non-issue. The OSB works fine. We shouldn't have to pay
| US$100's for an "upgrade" and then waste valuable time trying to find
| a 3rd Party utility, that "does just about everything the OSB could
| do" to replace something that shouldn't have been removed in the 1st
| place. Stop trying to justify the unjustifiable. MS should admit they
| screwed up and put up an Office Update for 2003 with a compatible OSB
| in it...period.
|
| Cheers,
| John
| "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
| ***Arthur C. Clarke***

 

[Chris Schatte]

Agree, and straight to the point of some of the original posts and re's concerning "where's the tool bar in Office 2003...etc...

 

[John Ski]

Subject: Re: No Office Toolbar in 2003??!!

From: "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
(e-mail address removed)
Date: 2/24/2004 9:40 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <e4wEAj0#[email protected]>

I completely disagree but that is what civilized discourse is all about. I
DON'T think they made a mistake, they just removed some bloat from Office to
use the built-in toolbars that Windows has.

Y'all complained about bloat? So, Microsoft removes some of it (if you
installed the Office XP toolbar, you would have noticed that it takes 45 MB
or so) and then you mewl and whine that "your" favorite "Bloat" was removed.

Milly,
My Office XP Pro w/Front Page takes up almost 300MB plus another 135MB for
Publisher. I never looked at the OSB to see how much space it took. I guess
these days 45MB more or less doesn't seem to matter as much as it did when a
50MB HD was HUGE. I never complained about bloat. Actually I never complained
about the loss of the OSB, come to think of it. I was and still am bugged by
the attempts at justifying it's removal by saying that there are all these 3rd
party apps available that almost work. Those that miss their OSB are probably
not the types that will be able to work well with 3rd party add-ons. They have
relied on MS for their Office S/W for years and resent the fact that a
perfectly serviceable little utility suddenly disappeared when they upgraded.
Maybe they'll get over it, maybe not. I must note that I haven't yet seen in
this forum a post thanking MS for making that 45MB available so they FINALLY
had room on their Hard Drive to D/L the latest Eminem track.


Cheers,
John
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
***Arthur C. Clarke***

 

[Beth Melton]

One thing I have learned through the years is typically MS has a good
reason for everything. Many times these decisions are made to prepare
for future changes to the application or operating system. (And some
of them are made as a result of usability studies. I don't always like
these types of changes but I can understand why.)

More often than not initially we do not fully understand decisions and
I can recall many times thinking to myself, "Oh! So *that's* the
reason they did that!".

I know this doesn't resolve your current frustration, but you may find
the reason for this decision in the future. ;-)

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Brian]

MS has announced that IE will only be available as a part of Windows in
the future. Maybe they're getting ready to make Office only available as
a part of Windows.

 

[Chris Schatte]

Innovation by the manufacturer
Any business has to plan ahead, maintain their current/previous products, integrate them all together, and offer new ones.

 

[Guest]

Eric, Milly, Beth, et al,

Thank you for being helpful with this. Let me describe the kind of computer
environment I work in so you can see how this app is extremely important. I
currently use the OSB with a toolbar for each folder that I have shortcuts
in. I may be the exception here, but I have 24 folders whereby I actively
have 16 of them in the OSB and each of these folders has an average of 10-15
shortcuts in them to various programs I use. I have the OSB always visible
on top of the screen for maximum visibility and accessibility. I have come
to rely heavily on this toolbar as the gateway to what I need, I see the
icon click on it immediately if I know what it's for or pause for just a
moment and the tooltip tells me what it is and then I click on it. I don't
like to deal with scrolling through the start menu to get to what I need and
I have 30 shortcuts in the Quick Launch Bar for programs I very frequently
use (mail, chat, device manager, ICQ, command prompt, IE, Services, etc...)
and could perhaps add a few more to that area but it looks full as it is. I
have lifted the Windows toolbar up one level so there are two rows of 16
icons in the Quick Launch area, all in alphabetical order. The same is true
with the OSB, all folders in alphabetical order and all icons in
alphabetical order I wish there would be an improvement to the OSB, and
that is to allow customization of the folder icon so I can perhaps put an
abbreviation for the folder name in it and have even more room for icons

I have looked at many other programs that have some resemblance and some
functionality to OSB but none that I've seen aren't anywhere near what the
OSB is.

I hope you can understand now why I need the OSB and that it would be very
difficult to not use this app. It really doesn't matter if it's part of
Office or not, it's just a neat app that provides great accessibility.

Thanks,

Nospam

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

Can you elaborate on what other software you've tried? Did you try the
applications Bob Buckland mentioned (see the first post for this search:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q="bob+buckland"++slickrun)

As you called out below, OSB was actually pretty mediocre at meeting your
needs-- you can't fit enough icons, you can't customize the icons, you can't
show abbreviated folder names, etc...

--
Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Beth Melton]

It sounds like a Windows toolbar will fit your needs and it has more
functionality than the OSB, plus it's easier to customize - and you
can change the icons.

To be perfectly honest, I suspect many don't realize what you can do
with Windows toolbars and if they did they would have been using one
in place of the OSB long ago.

- Create a new folder with shortcuts to your folders and applications
(NOTE: Only use shortcuts in the folder - do not move the folders or
applications!)
- Right-click the Windows task bar and select Toolbars/New toolbar
- Select the Browse command and navigate to the folder
- Make sure you can see your Desktop and drag the new toolbar off the
task bar and to the top of your screen
- Size the toolbar if necessary
- Right-click the toolbar and select "Always on top"
- Right-click the toolbar and deselect "Show text" (and any other
options you want to change)
- If you want to change the icon then right-click the shortcut and
select Properties. On the Shortcut tab you will find a command for
"Change Icon"
- To change the tooltip change the name of the shortcut in the
Properties on the General tab

Now that you have your toolbar you can easily modify it by either
adding/removing shortcuts in your folder, drag/drop directly onto the
toolbar or drag off the toolbar, drag the icons to reorder them, etc.
Which is actually easier than it was in the OSB. ;-)

Note: To create a shortcut right-drag the object and select "Create
shortcut here".

AND (I'm not sure how you are using the shortcuts to your various
folders but...) you can create additional toolbars for your various
folders and add them to your main toolbar. This way instead of
clicking a button to open the folder, you can display the folder items
vertically in a menu. And of course, a subfolder in your toolbar
folder will display as a cascading menu. So for example you can do the
same on your Quick Launch bar to regain some real estate.

If you don't know how to get the toolbar to display vertically, resize
the toolbar to the size of the Toolbar title (same name as the folder)
and use the 'More' chevrons to display it.

I gave up on the OSB long ago since my virus scanner caused a conflict
with the "on top" option and have been using a Windows toolbar for
some time now and I actually prefer it over the OSB. I missed the
"Autofit in title bar" option at first (one feature a Windows toolbar
doesn't have, but I no longer miss it since I can now access folders,
shortcuts, etc from the top of my screen.

The only drawback I have found is if you close the toolbar you lose
it. It can be easily recreated from your toolbar folder but you have
to go through position, size, on top, etc, all over again.
--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/