Symbol Menu Has Disappeared

[Christopher MacLeod]

Hope you can help me.

The "Symbol . . ." menu under "Insert" on the menu bar has disappeared from
my Word 2004 app. I have exhausted my extremely small bag of tricks --
running disk utility, reinstalling, first, Word, then the entire Office
2004. Any ideas about what is corrupt and what I can do about it?

FWIW, the "Symbol . . ." menu is available and useable in PowerPoint. Also,
I maintain Office 2001 on my drive, too, and it's available there.

Many thanks,

Chris

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Chris-

Hopefully, you've gone to too much trouble already... Reinstalling software
on the Mac is one of the last resorts.

The first thing to try when toolbars (the menu bar is one) 'misbehave' in
Word 2004 is Tools>Customize>Customize Toolbars/Menus. On the Toolbars page
click the name of the offending toolbar (Menu Bar in this case), then click
the Reset Button. Make sure the Save in: list in the lower left corner
displays "Normal", then click OK.

If that doesn't fix it, you can go back into the Customize dialog box & on
the Commands page locate the missing command & drag it to the menu/toolbar
where it belongs.

Should there still be a problem after you've added these 'new tricks' to
your bag, post back with the results of your efforts.

HTH |:>)

 

[Christopher MacLeod]

Thanks for the tip -- I've saved it for later use.

Poking around in microsoft.public.mac.office list, I came across someone
listing about the same problem. A respondent led me to the Microsoft Office
for the Mac FAQ page, and there I found another suggestion -- which worked.
I simply trashed the normal template.

I suspect your solution would have been less drastic. Again, thanks.

 

[CyberTaz]

Glad you were able to resolve it!

The technique you used will usually do the trick, but for future reference
it shouldn't be your first step. Normal.dot stores a great deal of other
information which returns to default or gets deleted when you trash it and
Word generates a new one when you launch the program.

It is recommended that the current Normal.dot be _renamed_ (perhaps as
oldnormal.dot), rather than being trashed. That way some things such as
custom settings, Styles, macros,etc. Can be copied to the new Normal.dot as
opposed to being trashed along with the template.

Regards |:>)

 

[Clive Huggan]

May I make a minor contribution? I know that CyberTaz works cross-platform,
as I do, and because of that it's easy to miss mentioning this:

On Windows the Normal template file is titled "Normal.dot". But on the Mac
the ".dot" is omitted ­ despite the fact that it's better under OS X to have
suffixes on file titles, including any Word templates that one might create
oneself. It's my understanding that the ".dot" should continue to be left
off "Normal" -- hence, I infer, from "oldnormal" -- although I'm unaware of
the explicit reasons for it.

I hope this helps ­ and if anyone wants to modify or qualify this, feel
free!

Cheers,

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)
============================================================

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello Clive-

Good point... I've just gotten to the stage where the word 'template'
automatically triggers the .dot extn in my head!

In fact (at least in 2004) if you rename as 'Normal.dot' Word ignores it and
generates a new Normal. I doubt that the old file having the extn would hurt
anything provided you don't keep the extn if you ever rename it to Normal
again.

BTW- I've left the automatic spell checker to mark the string Normal.dot as
incorrect

Regards |:>)

 

[Clive Huggan]

In line.

CH
===

Hello Clive-

Good point... I've just gotten to the stage where the word 'template'
automatically triggers the .dot extn in my head!

In fact (at least in 2004) if you rename as 'Normal.dot' Word ignores it and
generates a new Normal. I doubt that the old file having the extn would hurt
anything provided you don't keep the extn if you ever rename it to Normal
again.

I agree! (And I'd forgotten about that triggering a new Normal; "Bend Word
to Your Will" is now amended; thank you.)

BTW- I've left the automatic spell checker to mark the string Normal.dot as
incorrect

Does that mean that you have got the Exclude Dictionary to work?? Be
careful before you say yes ­ there will be heaps of interest, because
currently everyone appears to have agreed it's broken in OS X. I miss it
greatly from OS 9 / Word 2001 days.

 

[CyberTaz]

Does that mean that you have got the Exclude Dictionary to work??

Sorry to get your hopes up. Based on everything I've heard I haven't even
tried. I merely meant that previously I had added Normal.dot to a Custom
Dictionary but have since gone back & deleted the entry. At least that will
call my attention to to it so I can determine (hopefully) whether I wanted
the '.dot' to be included.

Regards |:>)

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks, CT! At least Mac BU have it on their list of things to fix.

CH
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