PowerPoint.Advanced.Presentation.Techniques [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Customizing Menus and Toolbars

The toolbars and menus in PowerPoint change depending on what you're doing and on what settings you use. For example, when you're working with Slide Sorter view, you get a different set of toolbar buttons than in Normal view, and when you're working on a chart, different menus and commands appear.

You can also manually change toolbars and menus, in the following number of ways:

You can display or hide various toolbars and menu bars.

You can add or remove commands to toolbars and menu bars.

You can change the look of the commands and buttons by setting them to show text, graphics, or both.

You can change the hotkeys for menu commands.

You can create your own toolbars and menu bars.

It might seem on the surface that toolbars and menu bars are two different things, but they are actually just two different manifestations of the same basic element. With a toolbar, the commands appear as graphic in a single-level organization. With a menu bar, the commands appear as text in a multi-level nesting. In this chapter I'll treat them all as one element as much as possible to avoid duplication, but I'll try to show you examples of each type.

Moving Toolbars

Toolbars can be dragged around anywhere on-screen. If you drag them to the top, bottom, left, or right, they become "docked" there. If you drag them toward the center, they become free-floating windows. Some toolbars are free-floaters by default, such as the Picture toolbar, but you can make any of them appear anywhere you like.

If a toolbar is already docked, drag it by its handle. The "handle" is the set of four dots at the left end. If a toolbar is floating, drag it by its title bar. You do not have to enter Edit Mode (see the next section) in order to move toolbars around.

Placing Menus and Toolbars in Edit Mode

Toolbars and menus can be customized only when the Customize dialog box is open (select Tools⇨Customize, or right-click any menu bar or toolbar and choose Customize).

When the Customize dialog box is open, the menus and toolbars cease to work normally. Instead they are placed in a special editing mode, where you can make changes to them.

When you click a button or menu while in this special editing mode, instead of a command executing, the button or menu becomes selected, with a black box around it. You can then do all sorts of things to edit it-things I'll describe in the upcoming sections (see Figure 18-1).

Figure 18-1: Open the Customize dialog box in order to make toolbars and menu bars editable.

Moving and Deleting Commands and Buttons

With the Customize dialog box open, simply drag-and-drop buttons to move them to different places on a toolbar or to other toolbars. To get rid of a button entirely, drag it down into the slide area, away from the toolbars, and then drop it when its icon looks like an X (see Figure 18-2).

Figure 18-2: Delete a button by dragging it off the toolbar.

The same goes for menus. You can edit menus at the top level (that is, the names of the menus themselves, such as "File" or "Edit"), and you can also edit the individual commands on each menu.

To remove an entire menu off the menu bar, drag-and-drop it down below the menus and toolbars. To rearrange the top-level menus, drag them to the left or right.

Working with commands on individual menus is similar. Click a menu name on the menu bar to open the menu, and then work with the commands there (drag them up or down to rearrange them on the menu, or drag them away from the menu system to delete them.) See Figure 18-3.

Figure 18-3: Rearrange or delete menu commands by opening the menu and then dragging the commands.

Adding Commands to Menus and Toolbars

If there's a certain command you use frequently from the menu system that does not have a toolbar button, you might want to add it to a toolbar for easier access. One example is the Slide Layout command on the Format menu; I'll use that one for the example shown.

To add a command to a toolbar, do the following:

In the Customize dialog box, switch to the Commands tab.

Scroll through the list of commands, broken down by menu, and find the one you want. For example, in Figure 18-4, I've found the Slide Layout command by clicking Format in the left pane and then scrolling through the right pane.

Drag the command from the right pane onto the desired toolbar, in the spot where you want it. When it is in a valid spot, the mouse pointer will show a plus sign, as shown in Figure 18-4.

Release the mouse button to drop it there. A button for the command appears.

Figure 18-4: Add a command to a toolbar or menu by dragging it from the Commands tab.

To add a command to a menu, do the same thing except drag the command onto the menu name and pause-without releasing the mouse button-until the menu opens. Then, you can drag it onto the menu.

Editing Button and Command Properties

Each menu item and each toolbar button has its own set of properties. To set them, right-click the button or command, and use the shortcut menu that appears (see Figure 18-5). You can also click a button or command to select it and then click the Modify Selection button in the Customize dialog box. (Doing so opens basically the same menu as the right-click method.)

Figure 18-5: Right-click a button or menu command to display its Properties menu.

Here are the properties you can set:

Reset: Reverts the button or command back to its original settings as specified by Microsoft.

Delete: Removes the button or command from the menu or toolbar. It's the same as deleting it with drag-and-drop.

Name: If text appears for the button or menu item, the name is that text. An ampersand sign (&) before a character makes that character the hot key (in menus only).

Button image commands: I'll address these later in the chapter; they have to do with editing the button image.

Image/Text setting: This is what determines whether a picture appears (as in a toolbar button), the Name text appears, or both. The choices are as follows:

Default Style: Appears however that particular command has been set up to appear by default. Usually, this is as text on a menu and as an image on a toolbar, but some commands are exceptions to that.

Text Only (Always): Appears as text, no image, whether it is on a menu or a toolbar.

Text Only (in Menus): Appears as text when on a menu, but as an image when on a toolbar.

Image and Text: Appears as text when on a menu, but as both an image and text when on a toolbar.

Begin a Group: This places a divider between this button or command and the one(s) above or to its left. You can see examples of such dividers on the default toolbars and menus; for example, there's one to the left of the Print button on the Standard toolbar, and above the Save command on the File menu. This is a toggle setting; choose it again to turn the group divider off.

Assign Hyperlink: This enables you to set up a hyperlink to open when the button or command is clicked. Your choices are Open or Insert Picture. Both choices display the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, from which you make your selection. If you assign a hyperlink to a button or command, it ceases to have its normal functionality when clicked, and instead executes the hyperlink. After setting up a hyperlink, a Remove Hyperlink command appears in the Assign Hyperlink submenu for easy removal of it.

Editing a Button's Image

Most commands have a button image pre-created, so that when you place them on a toolbar, there's a unique button image there. However, you might sometimes Chapter 19), or you might not like a particular button image.

Several of the commands on a button's Properties (right-click) menu deal with the button image. You can copy, paste, reset, edit, or change it as listed in the following:

Copy Button Image: Copies the current image to the Clipboard, so you can paste it into an external drawing program and modify it.

Paste Button Image: Places whatever is on the clipboard as the new image for the button. Use this after selecting an image in an external drawing program and using Edit⇨Copy to copy it.

Reset Button Image: Returns the button image to its default.

Edit Button Image: Opens a Button Editor window, which consists of a very simple image-editing program (see Figure 18-6).

Change Button Image: Opens a palette of a few dozen sample pictures to choose from. Picking one of these can be useful as a starting point, but you will probably want to modify the image afterward.

Figure 18-6: Right-click a button or menu command to display its Properties menu.

Perhaps a few words about the Button Editor are in order, as it's not the most intuitive graphic program in the world.

Click one of the colors in the Colors section, or click the Color Picker to open a dialog box with many more color choices. Or, to remove the color in a spot, click the Erase tool. After selecting the color of choice, click the little squares in the Picture area to change one or more of them to the chosen color.

The Move arrows move the entire image in the arrow direction; this is useful if you start creating a button image and then realize it isn't centered within the button area.

Using the Rearrange Commands Method

New in Office 2003 applications is the ability to arrange and modify commands and buttons via a dialog box. It's not as easy as drag-and-drop for most people, but it may be useful for people with less hand-eye coordination than average.

From the Customize dialog box, display the Commands tab and then click Rearrange Commands. The Rearrange Commands dialog box opens, offering a full-service environment for doing all the kinds of edits I've described so far in the chapter.

To use this dialog box, click either Menu Bar or Toolbar. A drop-down list of all the available items that fit that description appears. Select the one you want to work with (for example, choose Toolbar, then choose Formatting), and its commands/buttons appear in the Controls area.

From there, select an item in the Controls area and use the buttons at the right to modify it. You can add or delete buttons, move them around, and even modify the properties (through the Modify Selection button's menu). I won't belabor this dialog box here because it's pretty self-explanatory, especially after you've already mastered the methods I've described earlier. Figure 18-7 shows it.

Figure 18-7: The Rearrange Commands dialog box offers an alternative to drag-and-drop.