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MS Office Customizations


Are you tired of always searching around the menu bars on Microsoft Office to find the command you need to use? There's so many icons and, let's face it, you probably only use two or three on each tab. Wouldn't it be handy to have all your commonly-used icons in one place? Well, it turns out that there's a way to do just that. Take a look at the two photos below and notice how the second is a bit different than your out-of-the-box MS Word toolbar.

Normal Toolbar:


Customized Toolbar:

If you notice on the "enhanced toolbar," you can have any of the normal toolbar options pinned to the top status bar (the Quick Access Toolbar) for quick and easy access! So here's how to customize your Quick Access Toolbar, then save your settings to access them anywhere you go!

When you open up MS Word, go to the top of the screen and click the little downward-pointing arrow in the Quick Access Toolbar to the right of the "Save," "Undo," and "Redo" buttons. It will pop up a dialog box like what's below:


Click on the "More Commands" button. This will pull up an interactive add/remove window for you to be able to customize and re-order the icons in the Quick Access Toolbar. To add a tool, simply select the tool from the list, then click the "Add >>" button to import it into the Quick Access Toolbar.


Notice that there is a drop-down menu for the commands under the "Choose commands from:" text on the left-hand column. It's generally set to "Popular Commands," which are the more commonly-used ones. There are several more commands besides just these, though, and by clicking the drop-down menu, you can access all the commands Word has built in. They are organized by the tab they are normally in on the regular toolbar, so just browse by "Home Tab," "Insert Tab," "References Tab," etc.

Once you've added an icon to the toolbar, you can click and drag each one to re-order it. Or, if you've decided you don't want a certain tool after all, just click the "<< Remove" button to put the tool back away.


Once you've figured out your desired custom Quick Access Toolbar configuration, simply press "OK" and the new icons will appear, ready for use!

If you're like me, you use a lot of different computers around campus. Unfortunately, these customizations don't travel with you around campus like your m-drive does. But, since the m-drive is there, we can make use of it! If you noticed, there's a button at the bottom of the "More Commands" customization box where you add and remove icons from your quick access toolbar. It's the little "Import/Export" button, which allows you to save and re-load these commands on another PC. By clicking that button and selecting "Export all Customizations," you can save the customization file to your m-drive (or a flash drive, if you prefer that). Once it's been exported, when you log into another computer, you can just re-import them!


So here's the import process: just click the "More Commands" button again, then the "Import/Export" button, then select "Import Customizations File". From there, locate the file on your m-drive (or flash drive, or wherever you saved it) and click the "Open" button to import your settings.


Upon opening the file, Word will ask you if you're sure you want to replace all customizations for the Quick Access Toolbar with the one you selected to import. The message will look like what's in the photo below.


Just click "Yes" and then click "OK" on the "More Commands" window to close out of it. What you're left with is a nice, personally customized Quick Access Toolbar!


And that's all there is to it! If you noticed in my exported settings folder, I have settings exports for Excel and PowerPoint as well. It turns out that you can follow the exact same steps in any MS Office program to customize the Quick Access Toolbar for that program as well! Happy customizing!

[One more quick note: if you dislike using your mouse to do things and instead prefer keyboard shortcuts, as I often find handy, simply press the "Alt" key and then type in the number of the icon you want to use (see the photo below). All your Quick Access Toolbar icons will be accessible this way as well.]


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