Cut Office XP down to size

Gregg Keizer ZDNet US

Published: 08 Jul 2002

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So many tools, so little time…

"Office XP is the most comprehensive suite I've seen. But I'm totally lost in the mass of options and features, and really need only a fraction of what Office XP offers. Is there a way to make the suite simpler to use and a better match for me?"

Analysis

Truth be told, even ZDNet editors -- who work with Office XP all day, every day -- don't use all the tools in its applications. Embedded comments? We never use them. Document maps? We've never chosen that option from the Edit menu.

Fortunately, Office XP is highly customisable. You can transform its applications, stripping off unused features and tools and keeping others. There are several ways to approach this. We've collected our three favourites.

Advice

Use the ‘Personalized menu and toolbar’ option

Thanks to this feature, all of the applications in Office XP automatically personalise your menus and toolbars. Office alters its menus so that they display only those commands you use most often, and the toolbars display only the buttons you used most recently. Although this feature may irk veterans who want to see the full menus, it's useful for anyone who uses a subset of any XP application's commands and tools.

By default, ‘Personalized menu and toolbar’ is turned on, but if you've disabled it via the Tools menu, you can switch it back on by choosing Tools > Customize > Options in any Office XP application. Then clear the check mark beside ‘Always show full menus’ and check the ‘Show full menus after a short delay’ box if you want the complete menus to automatically expand shortly after you've opened a menu. All Office XP applications share ‘Personalized menu and toolbar’ settings, so if you change a setting in Word, it's also changed in Excel or Outlook.

To reset personalized menus to their original condition, pick View > Toolbars > Customize > Options > ‘Reset my usage data’ > Yes > Close.

Customise menus

This second method of stripping Office XP applications down to basics requires more work, but if you want to decide which commands to show, it's your best option. In an Office XP application, click Tools > Customize > Commands.

Now, when you click any menu and any command, you can drag the command off the menu. Don't worry. You're not deleting anything in the application; you're just customizing the menu. Go through the menus and pull off any command you know you've never used and have no plans to use. Later, if you decide you need that command, you can add it back to the menu by choosing Tools > Customize, then either dragging the command from the Commands section on the right and dropping it on the menu, or right-clicking the menu and choosing Reset from the pop-up choices.

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