Deleting From the Microsoft Office Toolbar

[MartinLiss]

The Microsoft Office Toolbar has (IMO) a very bad feature and that is that if you delete a button from the toolbar it will delete the program and files associated with that button. I know you can simply uncheck the button which will hide it, but has anyone ever found a way to actually delete a button while keeping the associated program and files?

[Ideas Man]

The office toolbar, that takes me back. Seeing as they dropped it in Office System 2003 (for god knows why) I doublesized my taskbar and ploped them all in there, works a treat and allows heaps of different things open at once, very handy.

However, I am unaware of your problem, I'd just uncheck it, but you already know that.

[RobDog888]

Martin, what version are you running? In the customize menu you can click the delete button, but is this
what your referring to as removing associations?

[MartinLiss]

Yes I know, but if you do it warns you with a message like "All programs, folders and files associated with the item will be deleted - continue?" and I know from sad experience that it's not kidding.

Office XP 2002

[MartinLiss]

I'm sorry, the message appears after you click Delete and then OK. Here is the message.

[RobDog888]

Thanks for the message. I did click delete but I didnt click Ok to apply the changes.
Which button(s) did you have the bad experience with when deleting?

Why cant hiding the button be sufficient? Is this a custom button?

[MartinLiss]

Well it's no big deal but I use the Office toolbar alot and sometimes when I drag a desktop icon to the toolbar I find that I've dragged the wrong one and there's no way to delete it so I'm left with the clutter of duplicate and/or unwanted (unchecked) entries. It just seems pretty stupid that you can add items but you can't delete them.

As for which buttons I wanted (and still want) to delete, I'm doing some beta testing for Wilson Software for their new versions of Turbo Texas Hold'em and Tournament Texas Hold'em, and what prompted my question was the fact that after installing the apps I dragged several of the icons to the toolbar and found that I had dragged some of the old programs instead of the new, and hence I wound up with duplicates.

[RobDog888]

I think I have Office XP on one of my laptops at work. I will check if its possible to programmatically
access the toolbar objects and remove the unwanted buttons that way. I'm sure that through the UI it has
extra clean up code to remove the file associations.

Maybe we can bypass the clean up code that way. Will be interesting to check this out.

[mendhak]

I've been using the office toolbar for years now, and that messagebox is something of a weirdo. You can go ahead and delete the button, nothing will happen.

If you want to try it out, add some document link to it and delete the button.


PS: Love the toolbar. It shouldn't have been dropped from Office 2003.

[MartinLiss]

I just created a new folder, created an app in that folder, added the app to the toolbar, and when I deleted it from the toolbar it did nothing to the folder or it's app. I also deleted one of the poker apps I added and there were no problems so it looks like you are right for most situations. I say most situations because I too have used it for years and I'm certain that I remember that it did do what it warned it would do at least once and this seems to confirm it, so maybe it just happens when you delete an office tool link. In any case I'm going to mark this as resolved - thanks.