Getting Rid of Custom Toolbars

Tom is having a problem with what gets loaded up in Word. When he starts the program, Word loads about 45 custom toolbars on my system. He has repeatedly deleted the toolbars, but they still show up. He's wanting to get rid of these toolbars once and for all.

There are two things you should try. The first is to find the Startup folder used by Word and see if there are add-ins or other files located within the folder. You can locate the Startup folder in versions of Word prior to Word 2007 by following these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the File Locations tab is selected.
3. In the list of File Types, choose Startup.
4. Click on Modify.

The resulting dialog box indicates the location of the Startup folder being used by Word. To find the same information in Word 2007, follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. Click Advanced at the left of the dialog box.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the options and click File Locations. Word displays the File Locations dialog box.
4. In the list of File Types, choose Startup.
5. Click on Modify.

Once you have the location of the Startup folder, close Word and use Windows to examine the contents of that folder. Move any programs or templates out of the folder and then restart Word. If your unwanted toolbars are gone, you've found the solution to your problem—one of the files you moved was loading them.

If that does not fix your problem, or it only removes some of the toolbars, then the next best place to check is your Normal.dot template. (Honestly, you shouldn't have to do this with Word 2007. The program got rid of toolbars completely, and templates can't contain toolbar customizations. If you still have the problem in Word 2007, then you may need to reinstall the program to get rid of any persistent add-ins that may be causing changes to your ribbons.)

If you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007, follow these general steps:

1. Locate the Normal.dot template and load it directly into Word.
2. Delete the unwanted toolbars.
3. Save the Normal.dot template.
4. Restart Word.

If you are using global templates in your version of Word other than Normal.dot, you may need to follow the same process with each of those templates. Once you've updated them all and restarted Word, the unwanted toolbars should be gone.