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Hack 9 Tweak the New Document Task Pane

The jury's still out on the
Task Pane introduced in Word 2002, and poor documentation along with
bad behavior has only hurt its case. This hack offers some tips on
taming the worst offender: the New Document pane.

Many users find the New Document pane a
welcome relief from the clutter of the Templates dialog, which is
packed with obscure tabs (as shown in Figure 2-18).
Othersparticularly those who use many different
templatesabhor the extra step needed to get to the Templates
dialog, now that the Task Pane comes first. But like it or not, you
expect the Task Pane to behave as advertised. Yeah, right.

Figure 2-18. The Templates dialog grows more crowded with each release

2.8.1 Disabling the Task Pane When Word Starts

In a perfect world, you could select
ToolsOptions, click the View tab, and uncheck the
"Startup Task Pane" box to disable
the Task Pane. But for many Word users, this setting has absolutely
no effect.

The fix is a registry hack that will put the Task Pane back in its
place.

Make sure you set a system restore point before you make any changes to the registry: select StartControl PanelPerformance and MaintenanceSystem Restore (the location of System Restore may vary, depending on how you've configured Windows).

Close Word, select StartRun, and enter
regedit to open the registry editor. Navigate to
the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General\

Locate the subkey named
DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane and either delete it
or set its value to 0.

Close the registry editor and restart Word. The Task Pane will now
dutifully obey the checkbox on the View tab.

2.8.2 Add Documents and Templates to the Task Pane

The New Document Task Pane includes several default
options for creating new documents, including access to templates on
the Microsoft web site, as shown in Figure 2-19.

Figure 2-19. The New Document Task Pane

In addition to the two sections shown in Figure 2-19, there are two additional sections that will
become visible only after you've done certain things
in Word (such as creating a document based on a template other than
Normal.dot). The four sections are the
following:

New

Templates

Recently used templates

Other files

In addition to templates, the "Recently used
templates" section contains any documents on which
you've recently based a new document.

In VBA, you can add items to and remove items from each of the four
sections using the NewDocument property. In Figure 2-20, new documents (with rather silly names) have
been added to each section.

Figure 2-20. The four sections of the New Document Task Pane

2.8.3 The Code

The NewDocument property
has two
methods: Add and Remove. The
syntax for the two methods is identical. The syntax for
Add follows:

Application.NewDocument.Add(FileName, [Section], _
[DisplayName], [Action]) as Boolean

The brackets imply that you need only the
FileName argument, but if you omit the
DisplayName argument, you will not
actually add anything to the Task Pane. You will, however, gunk up
your registry with a useless entry.

You can use the arguments for Add to specify the
following information:

FileName

The actual name of the file, including the path, or a URL.

Section

The section of the New Document Task Pane where the link will appear.
You can use the following four Office VBA constants (their actual
values are shown in parentheses):

msoNew(1)

The "New" section

msoNewfromExistingFile(2)

The "Recently used templates"
section

msoNewfromTemplate(3)

The "Templates" section

msoBottomSection(4)

The "Other files" section (default)

DisplayName

The name of the file or URL as it will appear on the Task Pane.

Action

What happens when you follow the link to the file. You can use the
following three Office VBA constants (their actual values are shown
in parentheses):

msoEditFile(0)

Opens the file or template for editing (default).

msoCreateNewFile(1)

Creates a new document based on the document or template.

msoOpenFile(2)

Opens the file as if it were an external hyperlink
(you'll get the File Download dialog box, even for
files on your hard drive). Use this option when creating hyperlinks
on the Task Pane.

The following macro adds the template
MyTemplate.dot to the
"Templates" section:

Sub AddTemplateToTaskBar( )
Application.NewDocument.Add "c:\MyTemplate.dot", _
msoNewfromTemplate, "My Template", msoCreateNewFile
End Sub

Because the syntax for the Remove method is
identical to the syntax for Add, the following
macro removes the same MyTemplate.dot file from
the Task Pane:

Sub RemoveTemplateFromTaskBar( )
Application.NewDocument.Remove "c:\MyTemplate.dot", _
msoNewfromTemplate, "My Template", msoCreateNewFile
End Sub

Again, note that you must include the
DisplayName argument to actually remove
the file from the Task Pane.

2.8.4 Hacking the Hack

If you hack with the above functions for any amount of time,
you'll likely end up with a few items on your Task
Pane that you just can't shake. And
there's no way, using VBA, to get a list of the
items currently placed there.

To do some housecleaning, you'll need to hack the
registry. Choose StartRun and enter
regedit. Navigate to the following key, which
lists any entries you've added to the New Document
pane:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\New Document

Regardless of the FileName or
DisplayName used in VBA to create the Task
Pane entries, in the registry, the entries are always named
Custom1, Custom2, and so on.
After you delete them from the registry, they won't
reappear the next time you open the New Document pane. To delete one
of the entries, select it (as shown in Figure 2-21)
and choose EditDelete.

Figure 2-21. Cleaning out items from the New Documents Task Pane

If you want to clean out the list of recently used templates as well, just clear the entries from the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Recent Templates

Because the registry stores Task Pane entries, you can add new ones
using a .reg file. The following
.reg file creates a new entry in the
"Other files" section of the New
Document Task Pane with a link to the O'Reilly web
site, as shown in Figure 2-22:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\New Document\Custom9]
"Action"=dword:00000002
"DisplayName"="Visit oreilly.com"
"Filename"="http://www.oreilly.com"
"Section"=dword:00000004

Notice that the values for Action and
Section correspond to the values described earlier
in the syntax for the Add method (well, except for
all the leading zeros).

Because you can easily distribute registry files across an office,
this way you can add an intranet link or other useful shortcut to a
user's Word workspace.

Figure 2-22. Putting an Internet hyperlink on the Task Pane

To run the .reg file, just double-click its icon.