Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

Customize Office 2000 Places Bar

by TNPC Staff

If you're running Office 2000 applications you have probably noticed, to your delight, that the stodgy old Save As and Open dialog boxes have a column of icons down the left side that offer you shortcuts to handy folders like History, Favorites, Desktop and such. But if you want to create shortcuts to folders of your own choosing your delight was no doubt very short lived.

Not everyone keeps their files in the default folders provided by the Microsoft's design team. Most of us use folders built around client or project names in locations determined by our individual system setups and work environments. And that's as it should be. The fly in the ointment is that Microsoft did not provide a way in Office 2000 to customize the Places Bar shortcuts.

The good news is that there is a Microsoft Knowledgebase article on how to accomplish this feat so you can have up to 10 custom defined shortcuts. The bad news is that it involves some fairly serious surgery of the Windows Registry. Unlike a lot of Registry hacks this one goes a bit beyond just changing an existing value or removing a certain key. But for those of you who are comfortable with rolling up your sleeves and getting into the bowels of the Registry (and you know who you are) here's where to go to get the step by step instructions:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/301/tr.cgi?microsoft1

Okay, we've given you the good news and the bad news. Now here's the very good news. None of this Registry surgery is remotely necessary (whether you know how to disassemble your Registry or not). That marvelous macro maven of miraculous talent, Mike Craven, has written the perfect utility for customizing the Places Bar in Office 2000. And the really great news is that it's FREE. No, that's not a misprint, we said FREE. Free for the downloading from anywhere in the world. Grab a copy of Mike's WOPR 2000 Place Bar Customizer at:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/301/tr.cgi?microsoft2

This slick utility installs into Office and gives you access to the Places Bar settings from the Tools menu of the primary Office applications.

(Mike Craven, in addition to being a charter subscriber to TNPC, is the driving force behind a number of add-ins for Office. Mike's a contributor to PRIME's Word and Excel utility sets and co-author of PRIME's DocLauncher utility.)