Microsoft Word - How to add a Custom Menu to the Toolbar

In Microsoft Word, menus and toolbars help you manage your documents by offering shortcuts and quick access to frequently performed tasks.

For example, when you select the AutoText toolbar it displays all autotext entries that can be added to your Microsoft Word document.

Over the course of a long, complex document, this can save you considerable time and energy.

Menus display a list of commands

In Word, menus are used to display a list of commands. Most menus are located on the menu bar at the top of the Word window pane; shortcut menus appear when you right-click text, objects, and other such items.

Toolbars can contain buttons with images, menus, or a combination of both. Word’s default setting display the Standard and Formatting toolbars side by side below the menu bar.

You can also add a custom menu to your toolbar. For ‘power users’ custom menus enable them to increase their productivity rate as they can work on the document more directly. By creating these custom menus, power users can perform a complex task in one click.

Adding a custom menu to a toolbar

The next section explains how to add a custom menu to a toolbar.

• In Word, open a blank document and do as follows 

• Go to View | Toolbars | Customize...

• Click Name on the right pane.

• In the New Toolbar popup screen, name your new toolbar.

• Select Add a Custom Menu to a Toolbar from the drop-down menu.
  This creates a small grey box in the middle of your document.

• Drag this onto the toolbar.

You have now created a new toolbar.

Adding menus

The next step is to add some menus.

• Go to View | Toolbars | Customize...

• Select the toolbar that you created.

• Click the Commands tab, i.e. the tab next to Toolbars.

• From the Categories list, select Insert. From the right-hand pane, select Page Break.

• Drag Page Break over to the new toolbar that you created.

• Click Close.

You have now added the Page Break menu to your toolbar.

To delete a menu item from the toolbar

• On the toolbar, right-click the menu item to be deleted.

• Select Customize. This displays the Customize popup box.

• Right-click the menu item you want to delete. This displays a series of options.

• Select Delete to remove the menu from the toolbar.

To assign a link to a menu item

• Right-click the menu item you want to assign a web link to.

• Select Customize.

• Select Assign Hyperlink and Open.

• Enter the web address and click Close. The button now has a hyperlink to that website.

To change the button’s image on a menu item

• Right-click on the menu item that requires an image.

• Select Change Button Image and select an image from the options.

• Press Close.

Your menu item now has the new image.

Benefits of creating custom toolbars

For a Technical Publications Manager, there are considerable benefits to be had by creating custom toolbar for their team members. For example, if you’ve asked someone to update several large documents, you could create a custom toolbar with all the necessary formats in place.

This means that instead of the user having to manually go to Format | Font | Font Style | Size etc., for every single modification, they could just click a button on the toolbar and perform this task instantly.

And, as well as sparing your colleagues from Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, this will ensure that they modify your document exactly as it was defined in the toolbar.