Toolbar buttons in Office/Word 2003

[mc]

I posted this in General Questions but I think it's probably more appropriate
for Programming.
I have about 100 macros on about a dozen toolbars, each with custom buttons
for Word 2003. I regularly save my office settings, but Word has become very
buggy and crashy and I would like to start clean: reload Word (probably
reload Vista), reload my macro text and dictionaries, and, if necessary,
remake my button bars. I have saved the images and masks into a separate
file, but besides being way too impractical to work with these files, I and
don't know how to call them up
when changing the button image. How can I add them to the file that has the
hearts and happy faces that could be buttons?
Thanks.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Mc,

Best would be for you to put your toolbars and macros in a template other than
Normal.dot. Put this template (or templates) in your STARTUP folder and Word
will load it (them) so that the tools are always available.

You can use the Organizer tool (Tools/Templates and Add-ins, Template tab) to
copy the toolbars into the new templates.

You could use this for the macros, as well, but it would probably be better to
use the File/Export, then File/Import functionality in the VBA Editor to save
them to plain text files (*.bas, etc). This will "shake out" any "gook" that may
have accumulated in the VBA modules (which could be the cause of the instability
you're seeing).

When you create your new templates, rename Normal.dot to something like
Normal.dotOLD. Start Word, which will generate a clean copy of Normal.dot (your
macros and toolsbars will not be available at this point). Create your new
template files. You can use the Organizer to open your renamed Normal.dotOLD in
order to copy the toolbars. You should have exported the macros before renaming
Normal.dot

To answer your exact question: there is no way you can add your images to the
built-in images provided with Office.

Custom images (and masks) can only be copy/pasted by the user. In order to load
them directly from the files VBA is required.

I posted this in General Questions but I think it's probably more appropriate
for Programming.
I have about 100 macros on about a dozen toolbars, each with custom buttons
for Word 2003. I regularly save my office settings, but Word has become very
buggy and crashy and I would like to start clean: reload Word (probably
reload Vista), reload my macro text and dictionaries, and, if necessary,
remake my button bars. I have saved the images and masks into a separate
file, but besides being way too impractical to work with these files, I and
don't know how to call them up
when changing the button image. How can I add them to the file that has the
hearts and happy faces that could be buttons?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[mc]

Dear Cindy,

Thanks so much for your response. I hadn't thought to use File/Export and
/Import to clean up.

Yes, I already use my own template in my startup file, and I use Organizer
to sort everything out. But one of the things I want to avoid is carrying
everything over via Organizer, and I want to be able to start fresh if the
reinstall of Word suggests I have to.

Since everything is in my template, just reloading that with a reinstall of
Word would retain my buttons.

I suspect it's Word, and not my template, since I take in gloppy files from
clients who don't use Word well or who converted a WordPerfect file
imperfectly. However, occasionally after crashes I've accepted Word's
"repairs" to my template, rather than use my backup template, so it could be
the combination.

But if it is my template that's gunky, and if I want to remake my template
by installing my code text and fiddling with all my settings (instead of
using Save My Settings); here's my standby solution to my problem (if I
couldn't save my images to Word's menu). Make numerous copies of a macro
button with very minimal code (or just a macro name and end, enabling me to
create the button) onto a toolbar called "button images," then, one by one,
copy all the images from my master archival toolbar (which has a record of
every macro and button I've made) onto that less-fraught "toolbar." Then
after a clean start with Word, if I decide I need to remake my template, I
can use Organizer for that nonfunctional image archive toolbar, pull down all
the macros into text buttons into a new master toolbar, and start copying
button images. All this during some very long movies.
Thanks again for your help and suggestions.
Mary