Adding, Deleting, and Moving Commands

In the Tools > Customize menu, you can add, delete, and move commands within the toolbars by dragging and dropping or selecting from the menus in the window. You can also create new toolbars from existing commands.

Changing and Editing Buttons

With the Tools > Customize menu open, right-clicking on a command in an existing toolbar will open a menu of options. Here you can change the button text and select whether to display text or an icon or both. You can also replace the icon with another one or edit the existing one in PowerPoint’s primitive Button Editor. It is difficult to draw button icons using this program, but easy variations such as changing colors (as I did with the “Help” icon below to make two alternate book icons) can be quite effective.

Accessing Office Icons

For whatever reason, the Edit Button Image link allows access to only a small handful of Microsoft’s button icons (“FaceIDs”). There are several hundred to choose from, however, and you can easily access the full set using Shyam Pillai’s “FaceID Browser” Add-In. Rolling over the icons with your mouse also reveals their assigned FaceID number, which you will need if you want to create your own toolbars.

Creating New Toolbars

Macros you write can also be turned into buttons on toolbars, but if they are placed through the Tools > Customize menu they will be attached to a single PowerPoint file. (PowerPoint, unlike Word and Excel, does not work from a “Normal.dot” template). To create a persistent toolbar like the PEER Toolbar (find out more or download the PEER Toolbar here), download my ToolbarCreator.ppt. Complete instructions for creating and loading the toolbar are included in the presentation, and the code needed to generate the toolbar is stored in the Visual Basic Editor. You must enable macros for this file to funtion properly.

Saving and Restoring Settings

You can save your custom workspace using Microsoft’s Save My Settings Wizard, which stores your settings in a file that can be reloaded or even loaded onto another computer. From the Start Menu, go to All Programs > Microsoft Office Tools > Save My Settings Wizard to access this feature.

To load a settings profile, go to Start > Run and type in “C:\Program Files\ Microsoft Office\Office10\Proflwiz.exe.” If you start typing in the Run window, the Run window will offer a dropdown menu of possible paths, and you can find your way to this program in the event that your file path differs slightly from this one (your folder might be “Office 11” instead of “Office 10,” for example).

Further Reading

Microsoft’s Add-Ins tutorial http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q222737/

Better Soltuions’ Add-In Directory http://tinyurl.com/n9uxu

Shyam Pillai’s PPT Add-In FAQ http://skp.mvps.org/ppafaq.htm

Shyam Pillai’s FaceID Browser http://skp.mvps.org/faceid.htm