About toolbars, menu bars, and shortcut menus

Toolbars, menu bars, and shortcut menus allow you to organize the commands in Microsoft Access the way you want so you can find and use them quickly. Toolbars can contain only buttons, only menus, or a combination of both. The built-in menu bar appears by default at the top of the screen and contains standard menus such as File, Edit, and View.

Access automatically personalizes menus and toolbars for you based on how often you use the commands. When you first start Access, the most basic commands appear. Then, as you work, Access adjusts the menus and toolbars so that only the commands and toolbar buttons you use most often appear. To look for a command you don't use often, or have never used before, click the arrows at the bottom of the menu to expand it to show all commands. You can also double-click the menu to expand it. When you expand one menu, all of the menus are expanded until you choose a command or perform another action. When you click a command on the expanded menu, it is immediately added to the personalized menu. A menu command is dropped from the personalized menu if you use Access many times without using that command. If you want, you can specify that Access always show the full set of commands for each menu.

Toolbars can be positioned next to each other on the same row. When you put multiple toolbars on the same row, there may not be enough room to display all of the buttons. If there isn't enough room, the buttons that you have used most recently are displayed. You can resize a toolbar to display more buttons or show all buttons on a toolbar. To see a list of buttons that won't fit on a built-in, docked toolbar, click More Buttons    at the end of the toolbar. When you use a button that is not displayed on the toolbar, that button is moved to the toolbar, and a button that has not been used recently is dropped to the More Buttons list.

As you work with Access, the menus and toolbars are personalized to show the commands that you use most often. If you want, you can return the toolbar and menu display to its initial state when you first started Access.

You can also customize menus and toolbars yourself. You can customize the built-in menu bar by adding or removing buttons and menus or by moving the menu to a different location. Besides customizing the built-in menu bar, shortcut menus, and toolbars, you can also create your own custom toolbars, menu bars, and shortcut menus.

To create and customize toolbars, menu bars, and shortcut menus, and to set properties that affect how they look and behave, use the Customize dialog box — available by pointing to Toolbars on the View menu, and then clicking Customize.

Note   In the PivotTable List, spreadsheet, and chart tools on a data access page, certain toolbar functionalities differ from the rest of Microsoft Access.

More information

How to work with toolbars

How to work with menu bars and shortcut menus