Now that you know how to modify existing toolbars and menus, does it put you in the mood to create your own? You can build a toolbar or menu from scratch that contains exactly the commands you find useful. For example, you might create a toolbar that contained your "top ten" favorite commands, so they would always be close at hand.
The menu bar is considered a toolbar, and the menus on it are considered commands. If you want to create an alterative menu bar, simply create a new toolbar and then add menus to it. Toolbars can be a mixture of menus and buttons, although traditionally they are one or the other. (The Drawing toolbar is an exception; it contains the Draw menu as well as normal buttons.)
Here's how to create a new toolbar:
From the Customize dialog box, click the Toolbars tab.
Click New. Then type a name for it in the New Toolbar dialog box and click OK (see Figure 18-8).
A new, empty toolbar appears as a floating toolbar. If desired, drag it to the side, top, or bottom of the screen to dock it.
Add commands to it, as you learned earlier in the chapter.
Figure 18-8: Create your own toolbars.
New menus can be placed either on the Menu Bar or on a toolbar. They work the same either way. You could, for example, create a menu system similar to the Draw menu on the Drawing toolbar, where it exists alongside toolbar buttons but serves a different purpose.
To create a new menu, follow these steps:
From the Customize dialog box, click the Commands tab.
Scroll down through the left pane and find New Menu; then drag it to a toolbar or menu, the same as you would any new command or button.
Name it by changing its properties (Name property), and add a hot key if desired, by placing an ampersand before the desired character.
Drag-and-drop other commands onto it. To do so, drag and pause over the menu name, and the menu will open; then drop the commands on the open menu. Figure 18-9 shows a custom menu bar I've created to hold some of the formatting commands I need quicker access to.
Figure 18-9: Create your own menu system.
| Tip |
Want to assign keyboard shortcuts to things? Shortcut Manager for PowerPoint is an add-in that lets you define your own keyboard shortcuts for menu items, macros, and VBA code and define shortcuts in specific templates. See http://officeone.mvps.org/ppsctmgr/ppsctmgrl. There is an optional component called Shortcuts for PowerPoint that extends the program further by providing many predefined shortcuts that perform tasks such as erase the pen markings, change the pen color, change the volume, print the current slide, and more. |