TIP OF THE MONTH: CUSTOMIZING MICROSOFT OFFICE 2000 

Microsoft Office is a powerful tool that provides more options than the average person knows what do with. Learning how to customize it will save you hours of aggravation.

Personalized Menus and Toolbars

The Office 2000 package introduced a new feature: Personalized Menus and Toolbars.  Personalized menus display shortened menus … supposedly a time saver for you. When you're trying to learn how to use new software, the shortened menus can be exasperating, since tools are never where you expect them to be. To see the full menu, you have to click the double arrow at the bottom of the menu.  Another frustration is that the menu items move around, presenting you with the most frequently used menu items first.

Personalized toolbars can be equally annoying. The standard and formatting toolbars are displayed on one line (to save space), and only the most frequently used buttons are displayed on the bar. Unfortunately, the most commonly used toolbar - the formatting toolbar - gets cut off after one or two buttons. To see the additional buttons, you have to click on the double arrow at the end of the toolbar.

To turn off this feature (you'll have to do it in each of the products in Microsoft Office 2000), click on Tools, Customize (from the menu bar), then select the Options tab from the displayed dialog box. Make sure the boxes for "Standard and Formatting Toolbars…" and "Menus show recently…" are not clicked. Save your choices by pressing the Close button.

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