TIp of the Month: 

How to add and remove buttons on the office toolbar

This month’s tip is short and sweet, but very important. Have you ever looked at all of the buttons on a toolbar in Microsoft ® Word or Excel, and wished you didn’t have to look at some of them every time you used the product? Even better, have you ever muttered words under your breath because Microsoft didn’t put a button on the toolbar to switch between single spacing and double spacing? 

Actually, Microsoft anticipated your needs with the customizable toolbars. Depending upon the version of Office you are using, you have a few choices in customizing the toolbar. Let’s look first at the choice that everyone has (from Office 95 to Office XP):

Creating a new toolbar

Right click anywhere on top of a toolbar. You’ll see a long list of available toolbars. At the bottom of the list is the word ‘Customize’. Left click ‘Customize’. Click the left tab, Toolbars. Click the button, New, to create your own toolbar.

Give the toolbar a name (I chose My Toolbar). Make sure the toolbar is available to normal.dot (this will ensure that the toolbar shows up every time you open Word), and press OK. The toolbar will float in the middle of the screen until we move it later to a more permanent home.

Customizing a toolbar

The Customize dialog box should still be open. (If not, right click anywhere on top of a toolbar. You’ll see a long list of available toolbars. At the bottom of the list is the word ‘Customize’. Left click ‘Customize’.) This time, click the center tab, Commands.

For this part, you need to know where the command you’d like to add to the toolbar is housed on the menu. For example, if you wish to add icons for Single Spacing and Double Spacing to the toolbar, you need to know that this command can be found by going to Format, Paragraph on the menu bar. To find the icons for these commands, click on Format (from the Categories list on the left.) About halfway down the list of commands on the right, you’ll find the spacing commands.

Hold your mouse over Single Spacing. Hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse over the top of the toolbar you created in the previous step. Let go of the mouse button when you see the I bar appear on the toolbar (see the picture to the right). Repeat the same steps to add 1.5 spacing and double spacing to your toolbar. When you’re done adding buttons to the toolbar, press Close on the Customize dialog box. Your toolbar will look like this:

If you’d like to dock the toolbar (make it stick to one of the sides of the Microsoft ® Word window), drag the toolbar to the left side of the screen by holding down the left mouse button while positioned over the blue title bar labeled My Toolbar. Drag the toolbar to the left until it attaches itself to the left side of the screen.

Things are even simpler with Office 2000!

The typical toolbar in Office 2000 has a drop down arrow on the right side. If you click this arrow, you’ll see the option to Add or Remove Buttons. Click this command.

Each toolbar has a different set of buttons that can be easily added or removed. I’ve included part of the list of commands that shows up when you customize the Formatting Toolbar.

Click to the left of a choice to toggle the command on and off. As you can see, the line spacing commands are optional choices on the Formatting toolbar. If you don’t see a command listed that you’d like to add to the toolbar, go to Customize and follow the steps we discussed earlier in this lesson.

This lesson taught you how to customize toolbars in Microsoft Word. This lesson will apply to the other products in the Microsoft Office suite, too.