[ Team LiB ]
Customizing Your Menus and Toolbars
Outlook now has two methods you can use to customize toolbars to show the buttons and
menus you use the most and to remove the ones you don't use. If you've customized
toolbars in older versions of Office, you're familiar with the first method in which you
drag menus and buttons around with the mouse. Choose Tools, Customize to open the
Customize dialog to create customized toolbars (see Figure 16.2). Select the Toolbars tab
to make a new toolbar, Commands to add new buttons and menus to your toolbars, or
Options to configure display options such as personalized menus and icon sizes.
Figure 16.2. Use the Customize dialog to create customized toolbars.
While the Customize dialog is open, you're in Edit mode and the
normal actions of the buttons and menus are disabled.
The second method of customizing toolbars is the Rearrange Commands button found by
choosing the Customize, Commands menu selection. The Rearrange Commands option is
new to Office 2003 and gives users the opportunity to use an interface to add, delete, or
move commands. Rearrange Commands keeps the menu in view until you're finished
editing it, which is especially helpful when you're editing submenus.
Get in the habit of creating new toolbars for your customizations rather
than adding custom buttons or menus to the default toolbars. It's too
easy to reset the default toolbars before realizing you have custom tools
on them.
Using Rearrange Commands Option
Rearrange Commands is a new way to customize tools in Office 2003. Open the
Customize dialog using Tools, Customize and look for the Rearrange Commands button
on the Commands tab. You'll see a dialog like the one shown in Figure 16.3.
Figure 16.3. Rearrange Commands provides a simple interface for customizing
command bars.
Using the Rearrange Commands menu, do the following:
1. Choose the menu or toolbar you want to rearrange by selecting the Menu Bar or
Toolbar radio button.
2. Choose the menu or toolbar from the drop-down list. The entries are listed in the
order they appear on the menu bar and toolbars, from left to right, and include
submenus.
3. Add a new command by selecting a command and choosing Add to create the new
command above the selection.
4. Select a command and choose Delete to remove it from the menu.
5. Use Move Up or Move Down to change positions on the command bars.
6. Choose the Modify Selection menu, and then select Begin a Group to add
separators between the tools to group commands. The separator is added above the
selected command, and you can use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to
move separators into new positions.
Table 16.1 lists all the options available when you use Rearrange Commands.
Table 16.1. Rearrange Commands Options
Button Action
Add Opens the Add Command dialog; use it to add additional tools
Delete Deletes the selected command
Move Up Moves the selected command up one position
Move Down Moves the selected command down one position
Modify Selection Opens a dialog so that you can change how the button or menu looks
Reset Removes all customizations made to the selected menu or toolbar
The Reset button in the Rearrange Commands dialog restores the command bar shown in
the window to its default settings, removing all of your customizations, including any
changes made to submenus.
Changing the Toolbar Appearance
When you select a menu and see just a few commands on the menu along with a round
button at the bottom, as shown in Figure 16.4, personalized menus are enabled. If the
menu doesn't expand after a few seconds, click on the button to expand the menu. If you
don't like personalized menus, you can disable the option on the Options tab of the
Customize dialog.
Figure 16.4. Personalized menus show the most frequently used commands when
you first open the menu. When the menu remains selected for more than a few
seconds, the menu expands and you can see all the commands on it.
It's often easier to learn where to look for commands if you disable
personalized menus until you're familiar with the menus.
Personalized menu usage data is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\username\
Application Data\Microsoft\Office\MSOUTLO.PIP. Each Office program has a *.pip file
in this directory that contains the usage data for its toolbars. You can reset the data for the
Outlook toolbar by choosing the Reset Menu and Toolbar Usage Data button on the
Options tab.
If this is your first time using Outlook, other settings on the Options tab that you might
find helpful are Show ScreenTips on Toolbars and Show Shortcuts in ScreenTips. Both
of these options help you learn the keyboard shortcuts Outlook uses by displaying them
in a small balloon when you hover over a button.
Changes made in the Options tab of the Customize dialog affect all
Office programs, not just Outlook.
Outlook's toolbars dock at the top of the window by default, but they can be placed
anywhere on the screen (see Figure 16.5). You can dock them on the sides of Outlook's
window or float them on the screen. When a toolbar is floating, you can drag any edge in
or out to adjust the height and width of the toolbar, from horizontal to vertical.
Figure 16.5. Dock toolbars on any edge of the Outlook windows or float toolbars
inside or outside the window.
Move a toolbar by hovering the mouse over the resize handles on the left, holding down
the left mouse button, and dragging the toolbar. When you drag a toolbar close to the
window edge, it changes shape and docks on the window edge. When toolbars are docked
on the left or right window edges, the icons rotate so that they're always in the correct
position; text labels on the buttons remain vertical.
Vertically docked toolbars are helpful to anyone who uses a high-
resolution monitor setting and has a lot of white space on the right side
of the window. Moving the toolbars to the side frees up enough space
at the top of the screen to show more lines of text on the screen.
Two or more toolbars can share a row to save screen space. When you place multiple
toolbars on one row, you'll have some tools that won't fit on the screen. Look under the
Toolbar Options button at the end of the toolbar for the buttons that are hidden. When
you choose a hidden button, the button shows and a less-used tool moves to the overflow
area. This is part of the personalized menu feature which hides less used menu items but
remains enabled if the personalization settings in Tools, Customize, Options are disabled.
Although you can't close the menu bar, you can dock it on any
window edge or float it on the screen. When the menu bar is placed
at the top or bottom of the window, it cannot share the row with
toolbars. But when the menu bar is docked vertically, it can share a