Custom toolbars and menus in 2007

As I've been helping a friend with her Word 2007, it's still not clear to me
how one can create a custom drop-down menu with one's own macros etc. Yes,
there is the "custom toolbar" and "custom menu" that one can add to the
Quick Access Toolbar, but I haven't been able to figure out how to add
anything to this toolbar and menu. Information in Help is not there.

While there are way of modifying the Ribbon, the PTB decided that nobody
used custom toolbars and ditched them...Not Happy Jan.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

"Larry" wrote in message
...
As I've been helping a friend with her Word 2007, it's still not clear to
me
how one can create a custom drop-down menu with one's own macros etc.
Yes,
there is the "custom toolbar" and "custom menu" that one can add to the
Quick Access Toolbar, but I haven't been able to figure out how to add
anything to this toolbar and menu. Information in Help is not there.

Doug, you cannot be serious.

Are you saying that the user cannot create a custom menu and add items to
that menu?

I have vast numbers of macros on my own custom menus. It is central to the
way I work. Does MS think that people no longer create custom commands and
macros and need an easy way to access them?

To take away the ability to create custom menus is a "reform" of Word. It
is a DESTRUCTION of Word.

What the hell is going on????

Larry


"Doug Robbins - Word MVP" wrote in message
...
While there are way of modifying the Ribbon, the PTB decided that nobody
used custom toolbars and ditched them...Not Happy Jan.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

"Larry" wrote in message
...
As I've been helping a friend with her Word 2007, it's still not clear
to
me
how one can create a custom drop-down menu with one's own macros etc.
Yes,
there is the "custom toolbar" and "custom menu" that one can add to the
Quick Access Toolbar, but I haven't been able to figure out how to add
anything to this toolbar and menu. Information in Help is not there.

Typo. I meant to say:

To take away the ability to create custom menus is a not "reform" of Word.
It is a DESTRUCTION of Word.


"Larry" wrote in message
...
Doug, you cannot be serious.

Are you saying that the user cannot create a custom menu and add items to
that menu?

I have vast numbers of macros on my own custom menus. It is central to
the
way I work. Does MS think that people no longer create custom commands
and
macros and need an easy way to access them?

To take away the ability to create custom menus is a "reform" of Word. It
is a DESTRUCTION of Word.

What the hell is going on????

Larry


"Doug Robbins - Word MVP" wrote in message
...
While there are way of modifying the Ribbon, the PTB decided that nobody
used custom toolbars and ditched them...Not Happy Jan.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

"Larry" wrote in message
...
As I've been helping a friend with her Word 2007, it's still not clear
to
me
how one can create a custom drop-down menu with one's own macros etc.
Yes,
there is the "custom toolbar" and "custom menu" that one can add to
the
Quick Access Toolbar, but I haven't been able to figure out how to add
anything to this toolbar and menu. Information in Help is not there.

Hi Larry,

If you create a custom toolbar in a template or document in a prior edition (not add items to a built in toolbar) and load that
document/template in Word 2007 the toolbar will appear in the Add-In tab of Word 2007 and you can right click on it there and that
will add it to the QAT as the 'Custom Toolbars' choice. The 'custom menus' choice should work in a similar manner. Basically it's
going to give you what you see in the Add-Ins tab.

There are a couple of 3rd party products that address this. One packages a 'look alike' menu set from Word 2003, one
(http://pschmid.net) provides a utility with a UI to modify the ribbon to sort of roll your own, although if I recall correctly the
author (OneNote MVP Patrick Schmid) hasn't added the macros support module yet. Another is a dev kit to sort of drag and drop
'parts' into play to customize and there is also customization instructions for using the extensibility language (RibbonX) for the
Ribbon on http://msdn.microsoft.com/office

An Example for adding a menu dropdown for macros in Excel 2007 is available at http://rondebruin.nl/qat2.htm (from Excel MVPs Ron
deBruin and John Walkenbach)

====================
"Larry" wrote in message ...
Doug, you cannot be serious.

Are you saying that the user cannot create a custom menu and add items to
that menu?

I have vast numbers of macros on my own custom menus. It is central to the
way I work. Does MS think that people no longer create custom commands and
macros and need an easy way to access them?

To take away the ability to create custom menus is a "reform" of Word. It
is a DESTRUCTION of Word.

What the hell is going on????

Larry
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Bob,

I don't have 2007 in front of me now, but here's what I'm trying to figure
out:

In my Normal template in Word 97, I have my own custom menus, two of them
are on the regular Menu bar which also includes the usual menus. But also
the built-in menus are highly customized by me, with my own macros stuck in
those menus. For example, I have special macros of my own on the File menu,
the Tools menu, the Window menu, and so on.

The other custom menu (called Extra) is on its own custom toolbar called
Extra which I only display when I need it.

I also have a customized toolbar that I use in place of the Standard and
Formatting toolbars, so that I normally have only one toolbar displayed.

Now, getting back to Word 2007, let's say I replaced the Normal template in
Word 2007 with my own Normal template from Word 97. I click my custom
toolbar in Add-ins and that adds it to the so-called Quick Access toolbar.
Does that mean the custom toolbar is displayed permanently as a toolbar?
How does a toolbar display ON a toolbar? I'll have to check this out. And
how would the button images from Word 97 translate into the Word 2007
environment?

And what about my custom menus that are on the regular menu bar? Since a
menu does not exist by itself--it has to be part of the Menu bar or part of
a toolbar, how can a menu by by itself be loaded in Word 2007?

Suppose I wanted to keep access to all my existing menus, both my custom
menus and the regular menus to which I've added my own macros. How would I
do that? I suppose I'd have to create a new custom toolbar, and copy move
all the menus (regular and custom) from the regular Word 97 Menu bar to that
custom toolbar, and then add that toolbar to Word 2007. Is this possible?
And then I would have my own complete menu bar as a permanent part of Word
2007?

But there are further problems. For example, Alt+W opens the Window menu in
previous versions of Word. But in 2007 Alt+W opens the View tab of the
Ribbon. And there's no way to close the Ribbon down. So, even if I could
load an entire custom toolbar containing all my menus, I can't see how I
could continue to open the menus with the same key combos that I now use.

The difficulties are just unbelievable.

How amazing, that in earlier versions of Word, MS gave users all these
customization capacities, so you learn them, you build stuff with them, you
create your own customized version of Word, you spend years refining it, and
then MS comes along with a new Word version that basically makes it
impossible for you to use the customizations that you have designed and
built and you're forced to start over again almost at scratch.

Larry



"Bob Buckland ?:-)" 75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com wrote
in message ...
Hi Larry,

If you create a custom toolbar in a template or document in a prior
edition (not add items to a built in toolbar) and load that
document/template in Word 2007 the toolbar will appear in the Add-In tab
of Word 2007 and you can right click on it there and that
will add it to the QAT as the 'Custom Toolbars' choice. The 'custom menus'
choice should work in a similar manner. Basically it's
going to give you what you see in the Add-Ins tab.

There are a couple of 3rd party products that address this. One packages
a 'look alike' menu set from Word 2003, one
(http://pschmid.net) provides a utility with a UI to modify the ribbon to
sort of roll your own, although if I recall correctly the
author (OneNote MVP Patrick Schmid) hasn't added the macros support module
yet. Another is a dev kit to sort of drag and drop
'parts' into play to customize and there is also customization
instructions for using the extensibility language (RibbonX) for the
Ribbon on http://msdn.microsoft.com/office

An Example for adding a menu dropdown for macros in Excel 2007 is
available at http://rondebruin.nl/qat2.htm (from Excel MVPs Ron
deBruin and John Walkenbach)

====================
"Larry" wrote in message
...
Doug, you cannot be serious.

Are you saying that the user cannot create a custom menu and add items to
that menu?

I have vast numbers of macros on my own custom menus. It is central to
the
way I work. Does MS think that people no longer create custom commands
and
macros and need an easy way to access them?

To take away the ability to create custom menus is a "reform" of Word. It
is a DESTRUCTION of Word.

What the hell is going on????

Larry
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Hi Larry,

The Ribbon collapses if you use Ctrl+F1. You can, using the links in the previous method, to use RibbonX to customize the ribbon to
remove or replace entire chunks (groups) within the ribbon tabs and to add new tabs.

Customizations of older Word version built in Word menus and toolbars usually don't come over in Word 2007.

Custom toolbars and menus of your own can and by default work from the 'Add-in' tabs. You can create 'clones' of the older version
drop down menus or toolbars (hold ctrl key while working in the older version to create a duplicate of the built in menus, but with
a slightly modified menu or toolbar name, for example File, as File97)

Word 2007 usually retains the button images from the prior edition, but the button editing/pasting capability of prior versions is
not in the apps in 2007.

Rather than replacing Normal.dotm save a copy of your old Normal.dot under a new file name and then open it in Word 2007.

The Custom toolbar and Custom menu choices are placeholders on the QAT. They 'fill' with the contents of the Add-Ins tab when it's
populated, but revert to blank placeholders again if the other document (Add-In tab content) is taken away.

===================
"Larry" wrote in message ...


Bob,

I don't have 2007 in front of me now, but here's what I'm trying to figure
out:

In my Normal template in Word 97, I have my own custom menus, two of them
are on the regular Menu bar which also includes the usual menus. But also
the built-in menus are highly customized by me, with my own macros stuck in
those menus. For example, I have special macros of my own on the File menu,
the Tools menu, the Window menu, and so on.

The other custom menu (called Extra) is on its own custom toolbar called
Extra which I only display when I need it.

I also have a customized toolbar that I use in place of the Standard and
Formatting toolbars, so that I normally have only one toolbar displayed.

Now, getting back to Word 2007, let's say I replaced the Normal template in
Word 2007 with my own Normal template from Word 97. I click my custom
toolbar in Add-ins and that adds it to the so-called Quick Access toolbar.
Does that mean the custom toolbar is displayed permanently as a toolbar?
How does a toolbar display ON a toolbar? I'll have to check this out. And
how would the button images from Word 97 translate into the Word 2007
environment?

And what about my custom menus that are on the regular menu bar? Since a
menu does not exist by itself--it has to be part of the Menu bar or part of
a toolbar, how can a menu by by itself be loaded in Word 2007?

Suppose I wanted to keep access to all my existing menus, both my custom
menus and the regular menus to which I've added my own macros. How would I
do that? I suppose I'd have to create a new custom toolbar, and copy move
all the menus (regular and custom) from the regular Word 97 Menu bar to that
custom toolbar, and then add that toolbar to Word 2007. Is this possible?
And then I would have my own complete menu bar as a permanent part of Word
2007?

But there are further problems. For example, Alt+W opens the Window menu in
previous versions of Word. But in 2007 Alt+W opens the View tab of the
Ribbon. And there's no way to close the Ribbon down. So, even if I could
load an entire custom toolbar containing all my menus, I can't see how I
could continue to open the menus with the same key combos that I now use.

The difficulties are just unbelievable.

How amazing, that in earlier versions of Word, MS gave users all these customization capacities, so you learn them, you build stuff
with them, you create your own customized version of Word, you spend years refining it, and then MS comes along with a new Word
version that basically makes it impossible for you to use the customizations that you have designed and built and you're forced to
start over again almost at scratch.

Larry
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Bob,

You're saying that the customizations cannot be brought over to Word 2007
("Customizations of older Word version built in Word menus and toolbars
usually don't come over in Word 2007"), then you're saying that they can be.

Assuming that they can be, can they be modified once they display in Word
2007? Let's say you want to add a new command to one of the drop-down
menus.

Larry



"Bob Buckland ?:-)" 75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com wrote
in message ...
Hi Larry,

The Ribbon collapses if you use Ctrl+F1. You can, using the links in the
previous method, to use RibbonX to customize the ribbon to
remove or replace entire chunks (groups) within the ribbon tabs and to add
new tabs.

Customizations of older Word version built in Word menus and toolbars
usually don't come over in Word 2007.

Custom toolbars and menus of your own can and by default work from the
'Add-in' tabs. You can create 'clones' of the older version
drop down menus or toolbars (hold ctrl key while working in the older
version to create a duplicate of the built in menus, but with
a slightly modified menu or toolbar name, for example File, as File97)

Word 2007 usually retains the button images from the prior edition, but
the button editing/pasting capability of prior versions is
not in the apps in 2007.

Rather than replacing Normal.dotm save a copy of your old Normal.dot under
a new file name and then open it in Word 2007.

The Custom toolbar and Custom menu choices are placeholders on the QAT.
They 'fill' with the contents of the Add-Ins tab when it's
populated, but revert to blank placeholders again if the other document
(Add-In tab content) is taken away.

===================
"Larry" wrote in message
...


Bob,

I don't have 2007 in front of me now, but here's what I'm trying to figure
out:

In my Normal template in Word 97, I have my own custom menus, two of them
are on the regular Menu bar which also includes the usual menus. But also
the built-in menus are highly customized by me, with my own macros stuck
in
those menus. For example, I have special macros of my own on the File
menu,
the Tools menu, the Window menu, and so on.

The other custom menu (called Extra) is on its own custom toolbar called
Extra which I only display when I need it.

I also have a customized toolbar that I use in place of the Standard and
Formatting toolbars, so that I normally have only one toolbar displayed.

Now, getting back to Word 2007, let's say I replaced the Normal template
in
Word 2007 with my own Normal template from Word 97. I click my custom
toolbar in Add-ins and that adds it to the so-called Quick Access toolbar.
Does that mean the custom toolbar is displayed permanently as a toolbar?
How does a toolbar display ON a toolbar? I'll have to check this out.
And
how would the button images from Word 97 translate into the Word 2007
environment?

And what about my custom menus that are on the regular menu bar? Since a
menu does not exist by itself--it has to be part of the Menu bar or part
of
a toolbar, how can a menu by by itself be loaded in Word 2007?

Suppose I wanted to keep access to all my existing menus, both my custom
menus and the regular menus to which I've added my own macros. How would
I
do that? I suppose I'd have to create a new custom toolbar, and copy move
all the menus (regular and custom) from the regular Word 97 Menu bar to
that
custom toolbar, and then add that toolbar to Word 2007. Is this possible?
And then I would have my own complete menu bar as a permanent part of Word
2007?

But there are further problems. For example, Alt+W opens the Window menu
in
previous versions of Word. But in 2007 Alt+W opens the View tab of the
Ribbon. And there's no way to close the Ribbon down. So, even if I could

load an entire custom toolbar containing all my menus, I can't see how I
could continue to open the menus with the same key combos that I now use.

The difficulties are just unbelievable.

How amazing, that in earlier versions of Word, MS gave users all these
customization capacities, so you learn them, you build stuff
with them, you create your own customized version of Word, you spend years
refining it, and then MS comes along with a new Word
version that basically makes it impossible for you to use the
customizations that you have designed and built and you're forced to
start over again almost at scratch.

Larry
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Hi Larry,

If you create a menu or toolbar in an older version of Word that should load in Word 2007 when you open a document or template that
has those custom made items. (For example you can create a Toolbar named Standard2)

If you modify a MS provided built in menu or toolbar, those changes usually don't appear in Word 2007 when you open the document or
template they are tied to in the older version. (For example things you add to the built in 'Formatting' toolbar don't come over).

You won't be able to modify the toolbars/menus from the User Interface when they're in the Add-Ins tab. I haven't tried or heard
about any efforts yet that may have done that programatically with Word's VBA.

====================
"Larry" wrote in message ...
Bob,

You're saying that the customizations cannot be brought over to Word 2007
("Customizations of older Word version built in Word menus and toolbars
usually don't come over in Word 2007"), then you're saying that they can be.

Assuming that they can be, can they be modified once they display in Word
2007? Let's say you want to add a new command to one of the drop-down
menus.

Larry
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:05:22 -0400 from Larry :
I have vast numbers of macros on my own custom menus. It is central to the
way I work. Does MS think that people no longer create custom commands and
macros and need an easy way to access them?

It's not how you're used to working, but you can establish keyboard
shortcuts for your macros.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/