MS Word

Reset Menus or Toolbars That Someone Else Has Customized

The Problem:

A new temp borrowed my desk last week while I was out of town, and she messed up my menus and toolbars in the name of progress.

The Solution:

You can reset the menus and toolbars to their default settings in moments. Choose Tools » Customize and click the Toolbars tab. Click the toolbar or menu you want to reset (to reset all menus on the menu bar, select the Menu Bar item) and click the Reset button. In the Reset Toolbar dialog box, make sure that Word has selected the right template or document, and then click the OK button.

After you close the Customize dialog box, Shift-click the File menu and choose Save All. If Word prompts you to save changes to the Normal template, click the Yes button.

Get Rid of Proprietary Toolbars

The Problem:

Since I installed Adobe Acrobat, Word always displays an Acrobat toolbar when I start it. I can hide the toolbar, but it always comes back.

The Solution:

This toolbar, which is called PDFMaker, is part of the PDFMaker.dot template that Acrobat automatically installs on the assumption that you want to be able to create PDF documents (documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format) at any moment from Word. If you do want to create PDFs, the toolbar is handy; otherwise, it's an annoyance.

To remove this template, you must first unload the PDFMaker.dot add-in. Choose Tools » Templates and Add-Ins, click the PDFMaker.dot add-in, and note its location in the "Full path" readout. If it's in the Startup subfolder of your Office folder, exit Word, open a Windows Explorer window to that folder, and move PDFMaker.dot to a different folder. Otherwise, select PDFMaker.dot and click the Remove button. When (if) you need to create a PDF, reload the PDFMaker.dot add-in. Choose Tools » Templates and Add-Ins, and either check the box for PDFMaker.dot or click the Add button, navigate to and select the template, and click OK. Then click the OK button to close the Templates and Add-ins dialog box.


Other applications may install their own menus or toolbars. These are usually part of a global template that you can unload if you so choose.