OL2000: How to Use Personal Menus and Personal Toolbars

ID: Q193006

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Outlook 2000

SUMMARY

Microsoft Outlook 2000 has a new feature called Personal Menus and Personal Toolbars. This feature is shared across all Office 2000 programs.

MORE INFORMATION

The Office 2000 Personal Menus feature evaluates your usage patterns and displays only those items used most frequently on a shortened version of each menu. Holding the cursor over the menu title expands the menu to display all items. Similarly, Personal Toolbars intelligently share space on the screen based on usage patterns. Promoting most recently used toolbar items creates a hierarchy that enables multiple toolbars to share a single screen row. A slider quickly displays the complete toolbar. Quick Customize Toolbars allow you to drag buttons to the toolbar or select from a list of buttons to create a toolbar customized for you.

Personalized Command Bar settings are in the <Program name>.pip file. Once a change is made to the menu, the change is stored in the .pip file in:

C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Office

The Outlook file, MSOutlo.pip, is in this folder after changes have been made to the menus. All Office 2000 programs look in this folder for the menu preferences settings.

During the setup of Office 2000 a default set of .pip files are installed to the following folder:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office

How to Reset the Menus to First-Run Condition

There are two methods to reset the menus to first-run condition. The first method uses the menu customization dialog box and the second method is to rename the appropriate .pip file.

Method 1

On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Customize.

On the Options tab, click Reset My Usage Data. You will be prompted with a warning message:

This will delete the record of the commands you've used in this application and restore the default set of visible commands to the menus and toolbars. It will not undo any explicit customizations. Are you sure you want to do this.

Click Yes and click Close. The menus will now be in a first-run condition.

Method 2

Click Start, point to Find and click Files Or Folders.

Type MSOutlo.pip and then click Find Now. There should be two files that appear in the Find window.

With the right mouse button click on the file with the following path:
c:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Office
Click Rename, and change the file extension from .pip to .old.

Do not delete the MSOutlo.pip in the following folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office

Close the Find window and start Outlook. The menus will be in their first-run condition.

Additional query words: OL2K Changes customize preferences

Keywords : kbinterop kbnewfeature
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto