Toolbars disappear and reappear mysteriously. Arrgh!

[Bill Weylock]

I have slogged through all of the discussions of templates and preferences
and macros, and my take is that many of the most confident and practiced
Word users are confused about how to keep Office from messing with our
preferences, toolbars, shortcuts, and style sheets (for want of a better
term).

So I don¹t feel quite so alone. But I am a very unhappy camper.

What, pray tell, just happened with my carefully customized toolbars? They
include icons for many deeply buried features that I find essential every
day. And they disappeared with no clue as to why. I restarted, and they were
still gone. I began to write this message, restarted Word again; and they
reappeared.

What did I do to prompt this? Not sure. I certainly did not intentionally
change Normal or anything like it, and I absolutely have not been playing
around with preferences of any kind.

What I just did was to notice that Adobe had once more installed that
annoying and useless little PDF toolbar. So, following advice received here
a while back, I quit Word, went to the Office Startup folder, and deleted
it. Then I emptied trash and started Word: bingo, only the generic Standard
toolbar was showing.

Since I have massive customizations on my toolbars, I freaked (guess my age
from that). Then, as mysteriously as they disappeared, they came back after
two restarts.

Sure I¹m grateful to have them back, but erratic behavior is very disturbing
when it¹s my absolutely most essential critical application.

Can anyone please shed light. Ready to answer any questions. Thanks!


Best,


- Bill


Panther 10.3.4
Office 2004

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Further to Paul's advice, just in case you haven't seen the article on this
topic:

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/GlobalTemplate.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

DM

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Actually, that didn't make entire sense. The standard location of the
Startup folder is actually here:

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Word

(or Microsoft Office X if appropriate). That's where you'll find it now. My
recommendation still stands to move the Startup folder outside the
application folder - where it could get replaced by an update and you'd lose
all your customizations, and instead keep it with your other Microsoft data
in

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/

where ~/ means your OS user (home) folder. (I believe Microsoft should do
this, but until they do, you have to do it yourself. By putting an alias to
it in the default location you get the built-in implementation of your
startup templates with all their macros, toolbars and other customizations
being loaded globally at startup.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Bill Weylock]

Thanks, Paul.

I was confused by the first post because you were referring to macros while
I was talking toolbars. I realized it doesn't matter because they are both
stored in the templates (I guess??).

I'll do exactly what you suggest. It's only happened once, but it will of
course happen again at the time of maximum pressure.


Best,


- Bill

Actually, that didn't make entire sense. The standard location of the
Startup folder is actually here:

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Word

(or Microsoft Office X if appropriate). That's where you'll find it now. My
recommendation still stands to move the Startup folder outside the
application folder - where it could get replaced by an update and you'd lose
all your customizations, and instead keep it with your other Microsoft data
in

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/

where ~/ means your OS user (home) folder. (I believe Microsoft should do
this, but until they do, you have to do it yourself. By putting an alias to
it in the default location you get the built-in implementation of your
startup templates with all their macros, toolbars and other customizations
being loaded globally at startup.

Panther 10.3.4
Office 2004

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Why did a graphics company decide to have their little two-button toolbar
appear on it¹s own row anyway? Of all people, they should know the value of
screen real estate. If it appeared on the same row as another toolbar or
appended to another toolbar, I wouldn¹t mind it.

It's been said on the windows side that the Adobe toolbar will stay where
you put it, if you move it. Have you tried that?

Dayo

 

[Bill Weylock]

Blush. No,

It really didn't occur to me since my main reaction was half "who would want
that thing?" and half "why is it in that annoying spot." If I had seen any
use for it, I probably would have experimented.

Thanks, though. I'm pleased it might not be a hard-wired annoyance.


Best,


- Bill

It's been said on the windows side that the Adobe toolbar will stay where
you put it, if you move it. Have you tried that?

Dayo

Panther 10.3.4
Office 2004

 

[tuqqer]

Hi Paul,

I'm very interested in your post, regarding the Normal template vs a
New Template, and the moving of the Startup folder into the MUD
folder.

A few years back, I stopped customizing the Normal template a lot
simply because the thing would get corrupted so often. So I really
like your idea. I want to make sure I read you correctly:

1. You create the the perfect template, and instead of using the
Normal temp, you create another one, and then place it in the Startup
folder?

2. You move the entire Startup folder into the top level of the MUD,
for safer and easier backup.

Do I have these two steps correctly?

thanks!

Panther 10.3.4, and Office 2004