MS Office Toolbars

Highlight Toolbars in the View menu to see a list all of Word 97's toolbars. When you click on a toolbar to display it, a check mark will be inserted next to its name on the menu. To close an open toolbar, click on its name to remove the check mark.

The Customize command opens a dialog box in which you can add buttons to a toolbar or remove any you feel you don't need. You can rearrange the buttons, and even customize button designs. See below for instructions on how to set up the toolbars to suit the way you work and the kind of tools you need.

Word 97 Toolbars

The following Word 97 toolbars are available through the Toolbars option:

• Standard: Contains the most frequently used commands such as New, Open, Save, Undo and Redo, Spell Check, Cut, Copy, Paste, etc.
   
• Formatting: Commonly used formatting tools such as the Style box, Font Style and Size boxes, Bold, Italic, and Underline; Left, Center, and Right alignment buttons, Increase and Decrease Indent, etc.
   
• AutoText: The AutoText toolbar only contains three buttons, but they can be valuable. Click on All Entries to see the AutoText categories. Highlight a category to display a list of the entries in that category, then click on one you'd like to insert in your document.

  To add an AutoText entry to the list, simply type it into your document, highlight it, and click the New button. Word will select a name for the entry. Click OK.

  The next time you type the first three or four letters of a short entry, or one or two words of longer entries, a text tag will pop up in your document suggesting the entry. When appropriate, just press the [Enter] key and Word will insert the rest of the text for you. This is the new AutoComplete function, and it's great!

  To make sure it will work, open the AutoComplete dialog box and click to insert a checkmark next to Show AutoComplete tip for AutoText and dates. Click on the AutoText button on the left of the toolbar to open the AutoText dialog box, where you can add, delete, or edit entries, or select one to insert in your document.
   

• Control Toolbox: Used to insert ActiveX controls into documents.

  "A control - such as a checkbox, a list box, or a command button - that you create with the Control Toolbox and that offers options to users or runs macros that automate a task. When you insert ActiveX controls in custom programs, such as forms and dialog boxes, you can write a macro that is stored with the control itself, not just assigned to run when you click the control. You can make the control 'active' by writing macros in Visual Basic for Applications that customize the behavior of the control." (from Microsoft Word 97 Help)
   

• Database: Tools to manage data and fields, sorting, working with forms data, merge data, etc.
   
• Drawing: Tools for drawing and manipulating drawing objects, including WordArt and 3-D objects, AutoShapes, and Text Boxes.
   
• Borders: Tools for selecting line weight and style; background colors, patterns, and shading; and placement of borders, lines, and shadows/shading.
   
• Forms: Tools to use when creating fill-in forms. Includes text fields, checkboxes, and drop-down forms fields, as well as buttons for creating tables and frames, adding shading, and locking your automated document.
   
• Picture: The Picture toolbar contains most of the tools you'll need to edit a picture that you've inserted in your document. Options include: Image Control: Select Automatic, Grayscale, Black & White, or Watermark, More Contrast, Less Contrast, More Brightness, Less Brightness; buttons for cropping, choosing line style, object formatting, etc.
   
• Reviewing: Buttons for adding, inserting, and editing comments, and for moving from one comment to the next; buttons for tracking changes, moving from one change to another, and accepting or rejecting changes. There is a highlighter, new in Word 97, and a button to let you save the edited document as a version (also new in Word 97; see the Versions article).
   

• Tables and Borders: Word 97 Tables feature several new 'dyn-o-mite' capabilities (see the Word 97 Tables article for details). The buttons on this toolbar include the new Draw Table and Erase buttons as well as the Borders, Line Style, and Line Weight buttons.
  
  From the toolbar, you can Merge Cells and Split Cells, align text vertically at the top, center, or bottom of cells, distribute rows and/or columns evenly, sort or sum data in a table, and even change text direction.
   

• Visual Basic: Tools for running and recording macros, designing ActiveX applications, and access to the Visual Basic Editor and the ActiveX Toolbox.
   
• Web: Contains many of the tools you've seen if you've ever surfed the web: forward and back, Start Page, and a web address list.
   
• Word Art: This is where you'll find all the necessary tools for formatting your WordArt creations! With this toolbar, you can format your WordArt or change its shape, rotate it, change letter height, change the alignment (left, center, etc.), change horizontal text to vertical text, and adjust the character spacing.

Excel 97 Toolbars

• Standard: In addition to the most frequently used commands (New, Open, Save, Undo and Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, etc.), Excel's Standard toolbar also contains Summation and Function buttons, Ascending and Descending Sort buttons; buttons that open the Chart Wizard, the Map and the WordArt toolbars.
   
• Formatting: Commonly used formatting tools such as the Font Style and Size boxes, Bold, Italic, and Underline; text alignment buttons, Increase and Decrease Indent, etc.

  In addition, you'll find buttons to change cell formatting to Currency, Percent, and Comma thousands separator styles; and Borders, Background Color, and Font Color. There are also buttons to Increase and Decrease Decimal places without having to open the cell formatting dialog box.
   

• Chart: All of the tools that you need for creating, editing, and formatting charts using your Excel 97 data.
   
• External Data: This toolbar contains several buttons to aid you when you're using external data in a query: Edit Query, Data Range Properties and Query Parameters, and Refresh Data, Refresh All, Cancel Refresh, and Refresh Status.

  If you need information on using data from external sources, please check Excel 97's Help files. In the Index, search on 'external'. You'll find extensive information to help you.
   

• PivotTables: Here is what Excel 97's Help says about PivotTables:

  "A PivotTable is an interactive table that quickly summarizes, or cross-tabulates, large amounts of data. You can rotate its rows and columns to see different summaries of the source data, filter the data by displaying different pages, or display the details for areas of interest."

  Open the Analyzing Data with PivotTables topic, then select PivotTables: Analyzing data interactively or any of the several other articles on the topic that are available.

  The PivotTables toolbar contains various buttons to simplify up your use of this powerful analysis tool.
   

• Excel 97's other toolbars are some of the same ones found in Word 97 (as well as the other Office 97 applications). You can read the descriptions above for the Control, Drawing, Forms, WordArt, and other toolbars.

Default Office 97 Toolbars

When you install Microsoft Office 97, all of the applications display the Standard and Formatting toolbars, which contain most of the tools you'll need to do ordinary document entry and formatting.

To see a button's function, hold the mouse pointer over it for a moment; a 'tool tip' will appear that describes the button's function and the shortcut key you can use to access it from the keyboard. Below are lists of the buttons on Word 97's default Standard and Formatting toolbars.

Standard Toolbar Buttons:

Formatting Toolbar Buttons:

Clicking on some toolbar buttons (e.g., the Drawing button) opens another toolbar. Other buttons can be dragged off of the toolbar to 'float' close to where you're working.

For example, if you're working in a table and want to apply borders to it or to put a border around certain paragraphs of your document, you can click on the arrow to the right of the Borders button to display all of the border choices.

Click on the colored bar at the top of the borders palette and drag it somewhere close to your table or to the text you want to outline. When you're finished creating and formatting borders, close the toolbar by clicking on the Close button in the upper right corner (the X).

To display some of the other special function toolbars, highlight Toolbars... in the View menu then select a toolbar from the menu. You can also access the toolbar list by right clicking on an open toolbar, then left clicking on the one you'd like to open. Other available toolbars are:

Customize Toolbars

It's easy to remove toolbar buttons that you think you won't use or add any that aren't currently displayed (not all the buttons available for each toolbar are necessarily displayed).

• Add buttons to toolbars: Click anywhere on a toolbar with the right mouse button to display the toolbar shortcut menu, then click on Customize, OR

  Click on Toolbars... in the View menu, click on Customize..., then click on the Commands tab.

  On the left side of the Customize dialog box is a list of categories, with the first item highlighted. On the right are the commands that are available in that category.

  To find out what a button does, click once on it, then click on the Description button. If you want to add the button to your toolbar, simply drag it to the toolbar and drop it wherever you'd like.
   

• Delete buttons from toolbars: Open the Customize dialog box as described above and drag the button you want to delete anywhere off of the toolbar except onto another toolbar. This removes the button from the toolbar, but it is still available through Customize if you decide you need it again at a later date.
   
• Change the location of buttons on a toolbar: With the Customize dialog box open (see above), drag any button to a new location on the toolbar.
   
• Change the location of the toolbar: Click on the space between any two buttons on a toolbar to change it from 'fixed' to 'floating'; drag it anywhere on the screen and resize or reshape it to suit your needs. When you're through using it, either double click on the colored bar at the top to return it to its normal fixed position or click on the X in the upper right corner to close it.

To make certain that your customized toolbars will be saved for future use, select Save All in the File menu. And if you're bored with the standard icons or need an extra toolbar for your most frequently used command buttons, look in Help for ways to change or modify the icons or create a new toolbar. In MS Word 2000 Help, look under Customizing Microsoft Word. Select Customizing Command Bars, then click on Customize menus and toolbars for step-by-step instructions.