Why did my Toolbar change without me changing it?

[Malia]

I recently upgraded to MS Office 2003. It worked OK at first, but then I
noticed the top Tool Bar had changed on my documents. The text tools (File,
Edit, View, etc.) were gone and I could not find a way to change it back.
The other tool bars with icons are still there, though. I tried doing a
custom toolbar with those menus, but when I try to use them, they don't give
me the scroll down box.

Another oddity is I can't get to the "Print" layout and I hate the other
views (Outline, Web, etc).

I finally uninstalled the upgrade as well as Outlook 2000 (my original
program) and ran the "Detect & Repair" function, but nothing works.

Please help - I'm on a deadline and really need Word to word right.

Malia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm

 

[Malia]

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks, but I had already seen that and tried the registry repair deal
before I posted here. Then I saw on the forums where there are "issues"
between Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and Word. Hard to believe such basic programs
aren't easily and fully compatible, but I guess that's another issue...

Anyway, I went in to Adobe and upgraded my Standard v. 7.0.0 to 7.0.5, then
7.0.7. But my problems with Word are exactly the same irritating things I
describe below. I'm sure there's some kind of patch or upgrade or something
that will fix this - it's just a matter of finding it.

I appreciate your input. Any other ideas?

Malia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If Detect and Repair doesn't help, then I don't know what to suggest. This
sounds like a very badly broken copy of Word.

 

[Malia]

Yep, it's broke alright! Detect & Repair didn't work, nor did uninstalling
and reinstalling both the original Office 2000 and the upgrade. I'm at the
end of my expertise, and it's such a pain to use Word now. I'm gonna try to
get with Adobe today since that's the program that caused the problem. Any
other ideas on where to go for help?

Thanks!
Malia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm for
general troubleshooting tips.

 

[Malia]

Yeah, I've been there before, too. I went from there to the help page "My
Menus & Toolbars Are Missing" and followed their two suggestions there:

/a Switch - When I did this, a Word doc came up and all looked good -
regular menu and toolbars and view could be switched from Normal to Print,
etc. However, next time I opened Word, the same problem I described before
came with the new document.

Delete & recreating corrupt registry values - I followed all instructions
(using 11.0 as version even though the instructions don't specify one for
Word 2003). I deleted the Toolbars value and it made no difference
whatsoever.

I then uninstalled Adobe 7.0.7. Still no luck.

I feel pretty much screwed at this point. I paid the bucks to upgrade from
2000 to 2003 last month because MS says they won't support 2000 anymore so I
had no choice. Even so, it won't work right and the standard "fixes" fix
nothing, so what am I supposed to do? I guess I can't get my money back for
2003, so is my only chance to go buy Word Perfect or another word processing
program and forget Microsoft Word? I'm certainly not impressed with it,
that's for sure!

Thanks for trying,
Malia

 

[Malia]

Update:

I tried one more recommended fix of creating a new Normal.dot by renaming
it. That apparently recreated it from scratch and all the menu and toolbars
are back to default, which is fine. I can switch between views now, too.

Now I will go back and reinstall and update Adobe and see what happens. I'm
pretty sure I know what caused all this. When I first upgraded to 2003, all
was fine. Not long after, I installed Adobe 7.0 Standard and tested it all
out and it worked fine. But when I tried to create a pdf document from 97
Word documents, it tried for a while, then started giving me error message:

"Word cannot save this file because it is already open elsewhere.
(C:/Documents and Settings/.../Normal.dot." I had to OK that message many
times, and at the end, the pdf was not made. I got around that by creating
pdfs in batches, then combining them from the pdfs to get the one document I
wanted.

But it was after that when the screwy things in Word started happening.

Anyway, just wanted to update in case anyone else faces this mess sometime.

Thanks all,
Malia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This sounds like you've got Normal.dot open for editing?

 

[Malia]

Not sure what you mean by your question. I'm really no computer expert - I
just followed the directions on one of the links you sent:

Searched for file "Normal.dot." Renamed it to "Oldnormal.dot." This
apparently rebuilds the Normal.dot deal to beginning defaults.

This seemed to fix Word until I reinstalled Adobe & upgrades. Next time I
opened Word I got this message:

"Word experienced a serious error the last time the add-in 'acrobat pdfmaker
office com addin' was opened. Would you like to disable this add-in? To
reactivate...click About MS Office Word on Help menu, then click Disabled
Items."

I said OK and it took me back to Word document with Adobe items weren't on
the toolbar anymore.

Then when I tried to create a pdf document using Adobe, I got that same
error message I described before about normal.dot. (Word cannot save this
file because it is already open elsewhere..." C:/------normal.dot).

Then message box said "Missing PDFMaker files. Do you want to run installer
in repair mode? I said why not (yes) and it went into its configure mode.
Got the same normal.dot error, but it finally finished and rebooted.

It then took a LONG time to get Word to open, and when I tried to create
PDF, got the "Missing" error described before. This time I said "no" and
went back in to Word to enable the add-in.

I went into Adobe again and won't describe the error messages here - I guess
I have to go to their forum for that, but it finally finished. Just now I
opened Word and it took a really long time again to open, but it did and I
was even able to create a pdf document from Word, so that's progress.

I've had enough of this "fun" for the day. I really don't know what else to
do at this point anyway.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm guessing that you can't repair Acrobat with Word open. The problem is
that Acrobat is trying to put its toolbar in Normal.dot, and it can't do
that while Normal.dot is open, which it is when Word is open.

FWIW, there are easier ways to get rid of the Acrobat toolbar; see
http://www.gmayor.com/lose_that_adobe_acrobat_toolbar.htm. But the origin of
the whole problem was evidently that you removed the PDFMaker.dot add-in
from Word's Startup menu. Seems it seems likely that it was not the cause of
the original problem, you should have just moved it back in.

 

[Malia]

I didn't try to repair Acrobat with Word open. Whenever I was doing repair
or uninstall/reinstall stuff, I had everything else closed (even was offline
with Norton deactivated).

After rebuilding the normal.dot and reinstalling Acrobat, there were a few
glitchy error messages, but it seems to be OK now - I was able to open Word
this morning and create a pdf.

Thanks for all the brainstorming!
Malia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Glad you finally got it sorted.