Word toolbars

[Frank]

I am using MS word 2004 for MAC.

When the toolbars stay at the top of the screen they appear just fine. When
I try and drag the corner of the toolbar and make it vertical the tool bar
looks fine at first, then when I click on another application and return to
Word, the vertical tool bars are missing the icons. A quick mouse-over makes
the icons reappear.

Resetting the toolbar or removing the User/Preference folder has no effect.

Is there a way to resolve this?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Frank,

What version of the OS are you in exactly? And to what level do you have
Office updated?

Once Frank answers those questions, can anyone else in the same versions
replicate this behavior? I can't in OS 10.3.9, Office 11.2.1.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>

 

[Frank]

Hi Frank,

What version of the OS are you in exactly?

10.4.6

And to what level do you have

Office updated?

11.2 (060202)

 

[Elliott Roper]

10.4.6

And to what level do you have

11.2 (060202)

<snip>
I have exactly the same version of OS X and Office as Frank, on a 12"
Powerbook 1GHz.

I'm not the best person to ask, because I would not know what a toolbar
was if it jumped up and bit me on the bum. If I can't hack the keyboard
shortcuts it doesn't get done. (I had a major panic moment today when I
forgot what keyboard shorcuts I had assigned to next and previous
tracked change. I had to put a clothespeg on my nose and bring up the
reviewing toolbar in the vain hope that hovering over the button would
either disclose the shortcut I had assigned or at least off some clue
into the twisted mentality of whatever extra-terrestrial alien at
Microsoft might have named the command or even what category it chose
to put it in [1])
However, in the spirit of scientific enquiry I woke up a few toolbars
and stood them up, and laid them down, and placed 'em on different
places on both screens and flicked in and out of several other
applications, both Carbon and Cocoa in case it was a graphics engine
thing.

You can guess what comes next can't you?

I could not make it go wrong.

I dunno what to suggest. Frank? Do you have any haxies or other
fiendish add-ons, particularly the sort of thing that makes dock icons
and windows transparent? If yes, what happens when you go into system
prefs and disable the little snivellers?

1. Could somebody please explain why the command to go to the next
comment called GotoNextComment is in the editing category, and the
command to go to the next tracked change is called
ToolsRevisionMarksNext and is in the Tools category and why the other
command called NextChangeOrComment is in the the Tools category, miles
away from its kissing cousin in the almost un-navigable, completely
unstretchable 2 cm high commands box?

Can anybody see any rhyme or reason for the Quixotic naming and
categorising conventions, other than a wish to keep users at arms
length, dazed and confused?

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

1. Could somebody please explain why the command to go to the next
comment called GotoNextComment is in the editing category, and the
command to go to the next tracked change is called
ToolsRevisionMarksNext and is in the Tools category and why the other
command called NextChangeOrComment is in the the Tools category, miles
away from its kissing cousin in the almost un-navigable, completely
unstretchable 2 cm high commands box?

Many (most) of the commands begin with the name of the menu in which they
are found, BUT: it's generally the name of the menu (and then sometimes
submenu) as found in Word Windows, which sometimes has no correspondence
with where they are on the Mac, (Hence the profusion of ToolsOptions
commands. There's no such menu item on the Mac, but there is in Word
Windows. On the Mac those are usually in Word/Preferences, but not always.)

Lots of the menus and menu items have changed over the course of time and
versions on both Windows and the Mac. (Even on the Mac, references are now
in Word menu, whereas they used to be in Edit menu, for example.) Arguably,
the Command names have been a lot more consistent over time than the menu
items they represent. You wouldn't really want the command names changing
every time the menu items change location, would you? It shows the
liabilities of naming commands after their menu locations, which - when they
don't move - are a convenient way to find them.

One wonders what will happen to these now that the next version of Word
Windows is doing away with menus altogether... Probably they'll keep their
names, where they still exist, but I don't know.

Can anybody see any rhyme or reason for the Quixotic naming and
categorising conventions, other than a wish to keep users at arms
length, dazed and confused?

Oh, come on, Elliott. Any time there are hidden controls - which is what
customizations, keyboard shortcuts, and the like are - it becomes in effect
a simplistic "programming language". There are always going to be arbitrary
things there. I thinks it's because they tried to keep it too simple -
naming commands after UI menu locations and squishing multiple words
together in Microsoft "Hungarian" programming style - without realizing how
much the UI might change over time, versions, and platforms, that we landed
in this minefield. If they had chosen a more reliable method to start with
it would have been by definition more arbitrary, with little or no relation
to what the command did or where it could be found, and people would have
complained that it was "too difficult".

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Many (most) of the commands begin with the name of the menu in which they
are found, BUT: it's generally the name of the menu (and then sometimes
submenu) as found in Word Windows, which sometimes has no correspondence
with where they are on the Mac, (Hence the profusion of ToolsOptions
commands. There's no such menu item on the Mac, but there is in Word
Windows. On the Mac those are usually in Word/Preferences, but not always.)

I can accept that you are trying to put a good face on the mess, but it
would have been fairly simple to do two things without changing command
names from version to version. Make that three.
1. Implement hover over consistently so that you an learn the command
name from the toolbar icon.
2. Moved the commands to categories related to their toolbars.
3. Made it easier to navigate the command lists in tools » customize »
keyboard. With arbitary allocation to categories one is forced to
scroll though *all* commands using that tiny 2 cm high window that
can't be resized looking for a command name that might somehow be
related to the operation you wish to perform. It is also instructive to
observe how egregiously Word corrupts the human interface guidelines
for usiing the keyboard to position yourself in the hundreds of entries
therein.

OK three and a half. Try to think of a help search string that will
bring up anything useful. It is *very* instructive to see what garbage
you get offered with "Go to Next Comment" or "Go to next tracked
change"

Lots of the menus and menu items have changed over the course of time and
versions on both Windows and the Mac. (Even on the Mac, references are now
in Word menu, whereas they used to be in Edit menu, for example.) Arguably,
the Command names have been a lot more consistent over time than the menu
items they represent. You wouldn't really want the command names changing
every time the menu items change location, would you? It shows the
liabilities of naming commands after their menu locations, which - when they
don't move - are a convenient way to find them.

Yebbut! there is nothing stopping them assigning them to vaguely
consistent categories is there? Or making the help useful? Or telling
you the command name when hovering on *every* control.

How can they justify putting next comment in one category, next change
in another, and next comment *or* change with an utterly different
naming convention to the other two? Failing to keep the product
consistent is one thing, but to get it this bad, you have to ask what
it was like when they started.

What started me on this mission was failing to find the shortcut for
that which I thought I had previously assigned. What tripped me was the
hard to discover fact that a command existed to go to both comments
*or* tracked changes. Last time I fought with it, I was looking for
next tracked change, could not find it and assigned a shortcut to next
comment *or* change thinking that was the best there was.

One wonders what will happen to these now that the next version of Word
Windows is doing away with menus altogether... Probably they'll keep their
names, where they still exist, but I don't know.

They better not do that to the Mac one. How can you drive a Mac without
the menu bar?
I read on a blog somewhere they do intend to preserve keyboard
shortcuts and let you operate on your document without that vast swathe
of bloat obscuring your work, so I guess I'll have to wait to see if
Tools » Customize » Keyboard still works, and how the hell I will be
able to reach it without a menu, and whether when I get there it will
still be the same morass of mis-design it is today.

Sometimes I despair.

Oh, come on, Elliott. Any time there are hidden controls - which is what
customizations, keyboard shortcuts, and the like are - it becomes in effect
a simplistic "programming language".

I can't buy that. It is nothing more than the name of a control. That's
not a language. It's a name.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Thanks, Elliott. I know it was a sacrifice ;-).

I dunno what to suggest. Frank? Do you have any haxies or other
fiendish add-ons, particularly the sort of thing that makes dock icons
and windows transparent? If yes, what happens when you go into system
prefs and disable the little snivellers?

Frank, Elliott's questions about add-ins are a good place to start. You'll
find more about that here: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Add-Ins.html>

Once you're on that page, you'll see a Troubleshooting link at the top or
left. If add-ins don't prove to be the problem, try testing your Normal
template and then your Word preferences.

1. Could somebody please explain why the command to go to the next
comment called GotoNextComment is in the editing category, and the
command to go to the next tracked change is called
ToolsRevisionMarksNext and is in the Tools category and why the other
command called NextChangeOrComment is in the the Tools category, miles
away from its kissing cousin in the almost un-navigable, completely
unstretchable 2 cm high commands box?

Can anybody see any rhyme or reason for the Quixotic naming and
categorising conventions, other than a wish to keep users at arms
length, dazed and confused?

Gee, Elliott, I was just going to answer no to both of these questions but
I'll defer to Paul <eg>.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Side note:

This has been reported before, and I reproduced it when I was in Panther,
probably at Office 11.1. Problem with the vertical toolbars only. I can't
remember what I did to reproduce it, though it didn't take me that long.

Jeffrey Weston repro'd and logged it in 2004, so one of the several patches
since may have fixed it, but sounds like not, unless 11.2.1 did.
<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/browse_frm/
thread/c6b6a3beb8eb526/ea6dc448ab6542b4>

And "vertical toolbars" turns up other reports on google groups. No fix that
I'm aware of, but the search might offer Frank something.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

3. Made it easier to navigate the command lists in tools » customize »
keyboard. With arbitary allocation to categories one is forced to
scroll though *all* commands using that tiny 2 cm high window that
can't be resized looking for a command name that might somehow be
related to the operation you wish to perform. It is also instructive to
observe how egregiously Word corrupts the human interface guidelines
for usiing the keyboard to position yourself in the hundreds of entries
therein.

You can type a letter to jump to that range. Actually, multiple letters, if
you type fast enough. Of course, that requires knowing the name.

You can also futz with the menus and then check the Undo list to figure out
the name.

Don't complain *too* loudly--in WinWord, they took away the descriptions
attached to the commands, and so many programs don't let us assign keyboard
shortcuts at all.

The more time I spend in that dialog, the better I get at guessing where
stuff might be.

Daiya

 

[Elliott Roper]

On 6/8/06 2:16 PM, "Elliott Roper" wrote:

You can type a letter to jump to that range. Actually, multiple letters, if
you type fast enough. Of course, that requires knowing the name.

That's where they broke the HIG. If you keep typing the initial letter,
it cycles through all entries beginning with that letter. Over and
over. That is not the way a Mac should work.

You can also futz with the menus and then check the Undo list to figure out
the name.

I like the undo idea! But it does have to be on a menu. For instance,
after clicking next change on the reviewing toolbar, the undo in the
edit menu is still saying "undo revision marks toggle" which is the
last operation that was on a menu.

Anyways, I'm beating this to death. I'll try to think some nice
thoughts about Word over a coffee.