The original Office Shortcut Bar (OSB for short) was discontinued by Microsoft with the release of Office 2003. In fact, the problem for Office users had begun a year earlier with the release of Office XP/2002 - when the OSB was included on the Office CD-ROM, though not installed by default, so many Office users thought it had already gone. But that was not the case. An alternative has been available, with a more modern style, off this page, since 2004.
To obtain our office sidebar, which is like the one you can see in Fig 1, all you have to do is click whichever of the three blue links just below corresponds with your versions of MS Office and Windows operating system. The link will download a small zip file. Save it to your desktop > right-click on the file and look for an option like "Extract All..." or 'Extract Here' to extract the contents directly to the desktop. Our office bar is not a program or utility which needs to be installed on your system, so there is no risk to your computer. The office bar simply takes advantage of a little-known feature, within all versions of Windows from 98 thru XP and Vista, which allows any yellow folder to be turned into a toolbar which, like the original OSB, can then be docked along any of the four sides of the screen. Each zip file comes preloaded with all the relevant shortcuts for the relevant versions of Office
/Windows.| Office XP/2002 on Windows XP |
Office 2003 on Windows XP or Vista |
Office 2007 on Windows XP or Vista not Windows 7 |
On the original Office Shortcut Bar, related icons were grouped together, with spaces separating
the groups. We have done the same on our replacement office toolbar because we think separated groups
look more professional and make life easier. Separators are not normally possible on
this particular type of Windows' toolbar, so they are something we had to specially invent for
the purpose. And, as you can see in Fig 1, the separation into groups is quite effective.
The groupings shown on the right correspond exactly with the groups that were deployed on the
original Microsoft OSB except, if you have Office 2007, you will not receive any of the top
three icons as they are not supported in Office 2007. Instead, you will receive a few
others, elsewhere on the bar, which are new to Office 2007.
All you need to do now is click the relevant zip file and follow the simple instructions
which come with it.
|
You do not need to read the rest of this column unless you are curious about the history and workings of the original OSB. This may be of possible interest to anyone still using, or wishing to use, the original OSB on a pre-XP computer.
History
The OSB has its roots in an ancient, forgotten application called the Microsoft Office Manager. But it was later, with Microsoft Office 97, running on Windows 95, that the real Office Shortcut Bar came into being. It was the first-ever computer toolbar to which users could add shortcuts of their own choosing, and dock it to whichever side they wanted on the desktop. It was a terrific innovation which has never lost its appeal to those who once were, or still are, familiar with it.
Back in those pre-internet days of 1997, the only serious thing PCs were actually used for was word processing. So the OSB became a firm favourite with the power users of the time, who were mainly office darlings like secretaries, typists and PAs. And the OSB still would be popular had it not been pushed to one side in Office XP/2002 (i.e. no longer installed from the Office CD by default), and subsequently ditched altogether from Office 2003 and Office 2007.
Files msoffice.exe and osa.exe
When installing MS Office, the setup file places a number of standard application files in an 'Office' folder in the C:\Programs' directory, files like winword.exe (Word) and excel.exe (Excel). In older versions of Office (Office 97, 2000 or XP/2002), files msoffice.exe (the original Office Shortcut Bar) and osa.exe (the Office Startup Assistant - not to be confused with Word's popup paper clip called Office Assistant) would also be installed in the 'Office' folder, and the install also placed shortcuts pointing to those last two files in a folder buried in the Windows' directory, called StartUp. The shortcut to msoffice.exe ensured the Office Shortcut Bar appeared on the desktop automatically each time the computer was switched on though, sometimes, in the case of Office 2000 and Office XP/2002, with assistance from the shortcut to osa.exe (called osa9.exe in Office 2000), depending on what switches were appended to the shortcut's path. If, for any reason, the start-up shortcut to msoffice.exe was not present, double-clicking that file displayed a popup message which allowed you to put matters right.
The location of the file msoffice.exe could vary, depending on the version of Office. In Office 97, it was in a folder called Office. In Office 2000, it was in a folder called Office9. In Office XP/2002, it was in a folder called Office10. In Office 2003, the equivalent folder was called Office11 but, unfortunately, there was no msoffice.exe in it. Nor, incidentally, could the file msoffice.exe be successfully copied from a computer with the earlier Office XP/2002 to a computer with Office 2003. Trying that would actually result in the OSB appearing in Office 2003, and it could be docked down the side of the screen. But the toolbar would be devoid of any shortcuts and there was no way to populate it with any. It is the same sad story with Office 2007, which installs to a folder called Office12, and there is no msoffice.exe file in there.
There is one exception. We have heard of some people who have installed Office 2003 or 2007 on a Windows XP machine and yet somehow still have the old Office Shortcut Bar. The main possibility for this is that they did not uninstall their previous version of Office, at least not fully. Because different Office versions are installed to differently numbered Office folders, as we have shown above, that permits earlier versions of Office to covertly coexist in full or in part on the same XP machine. So the OSB they are actually seeing could be their old one which is still starting up from the original link in the Windows' StartUp folder to the msoffice.exe file in their earlier version of Office. By right-clicking on that OSB, it would be possible to configure the buttons to point to the Office apps in their later version of Office. For more information on that arrangement, see...
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=822573
File msconfig.exe
If you wanted to stop the original OSB process from running, you could stop it temporarily in the current session only via Windows' Task Manager. If you wanted to stop it more permanently, the simplest way was to run 'msconfig' (e.g. Start > Run > type in msconfig > OK). That would open Windows' System Configuration Utility from where, under its Startup tab, it was possible to untick a box against 'Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar'. That would cause Windows to move the start-up shortcut for msoffice.exe from the Windows' folder called StartUp to a Windows' folder specially generated and called Disabled Startup Items. Shortcuts to one or both of those folders would be visible in the Start > (All) Programs' menu.
To later return the OSB to automatic starting was simply a case of reticking the checkbox in msconfig.
No msoffice.exe file?
The best solution for anybody without the requisite msoffice.exe file on their system is to use our replacement toolbar. Like the original OSB, ours comes preloaded with all the relevant Office shortcuts. So, download our great-looking office toolbar now and, if you actually work in an office, you can bet everybody else at work will soon be admiring it and wanting to pinch it off you!
| Duplicate set of links for the appropriate zip file... |
| Office XP/2002 on Windows XP |
Office 2003 on Windows XP or Vista |
Office 2007 on Windows XP or Vista not Windows 7 |
|
|
|
| Related topics | ||
|
|
|
| Office Shortcuts Menu - a decent alternative to our OSB, especially for Windows 7 users. | ||
|
|
|
 |
 |