Customizing a Toolbar

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated February 6, 2021)

Word allows you quite a bit of latitude in how you can customize the program to reflect how you want to do your work. One of the elements of the program you can change is the toolbars. You can add, remove, or edit buttons that appear on any toolbar.

To customize a toolbar, follow these steps:

Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
Make sure the Toolbars tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog box.

In the list of toolbars, make sure the toolbars you want to edit are selected.
Click on the Commands tab. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The Commands tab of the Customize dialog box.

In the list of Categories, select the major category that contains the command you want to add to the toolbar. For instance, if you want to add one of your macros to the toolbar, you would choose Macros in the list of Categories.
In the list of Commands, select the command you want to add to the toolbar.
Use the mouse to drag the command from the Commands list to its new location on the toolbar. When you release the mouse button, the icon or wording for the command appears.
Repeat steps 5 through 7 to add new toolbar commands.
Click on Close to dismiss the Customize dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1675) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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