About menus and toolbars

Microsoft Office automatically customizes menus and toolbars based on how often you use the commands. When you first start an Office program, only the most basic commands appear. Then, as you work, the menus and toolbars adjust so that only the commands and toolbar buttons you use most often appear.

To look for a command that you don't use often or have never used before, click the arrows at the bottom of the menu to show all the commands. You can also double-click the menu to expand it. When you expand one menu, all of the menus are expanded until you choose a command or perform another action. When you click a command on the expanded menu, the command is immediately added to the short version of the menu. If you do not use the command often, it is dropped from the short version of the menu.

Toolbars can be positioned next to each other in the same row. When you put multiple toolbars in the same row, there might not be enough room to display all of the buttons. If there isn't enough room, the buttons that you have used most recently are displayed.

You can resize to display more buttons, or you can show all buttons on a toolbar. To see a list of buttons that won't fit on a built-in docked toolbar, click Toolbar Options at the end of the toolbar. When you use a button that is not displayed on the toolbar, that button is moved to the toolbar, and a button that has not been used recently is dropped to the Toolbar Options list.

You can customize menus and toolbars yourself; you can add and remove buttons and menus on toolbars, create your own custom toolbars, hide or display toolbars, and move toolbars. You can customize the menu bar the same way you customize any built-in toolbar— for example, you can quickly add and remove buttons and menus on the menu bar— but you can't hide the menu bar.

Using Microsoft Access, you can create your own applications with a user interface that has the "look and feel" of a Microsoft Windows application. In addition to the toolbar features common to all Office applications, you can do the following:

• Create, delete, and rename your own custom toolbars, menu bars (including submenus), and shortcut menus.
• Convert the custom toolbars from previous-version macros.
• Import toolbars from another Access data file.
• Enhance custom toolbars by adding keys and help information to buttons and commands.
• Protect changes to toolbars, such as movement and resizing.
• Attach toolbars to a form or report.
• Add Microsoft Visual Basic functions to buttons and commands.