Word 2000 in a Nutshell

Customizing the Word Interface

Browsing through Word’s menus presents a superset of all of Word’s functionality. While Word’s new adaptive menus are designed to provide access to commonly used commands and suppress those used less frequently, these adaptive menus are really not a good solution, for a couple of reasons. First, different people have different ideas of what common commands are. Second, many people rely on scanning menus to find commands they use less frequently and may not remember where to find them. Some options selected here affect all Office programs; others—such as toolbar and menu customizations—remain local to the program they are used in.

Use the Tools → Customize command to perform four different types of customizations:

Tools → Customize → Options

Set general customization options that govern how Word’s personalized (adaptive) menus work and how icons appear on menus and toolbars.

Tools → Customize → Toolbars

Use this tab to create new toolbars, rename and delete existing toolbars, and reset default toolbars.

Tools → Customize → Commands

This tab lets you add, remove, and modify commands in Word’s menus and toolbars. It’s also used to create new menus.

Keyboard Customization

At the bottom of the Customize dialog that holds all three of these tabs, a Keyboard button opens a dialog for creating and modifying keyboard shortcuts for just about every command in Word.

Access Tools --> Customize More Quickly

Access the Customize dialog quickly by right-clicking ...