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     Office Shortcut Bar for Microsoft Office XP/2002, 2003 or 2007 with Windows XP or Vista (not Windows 7)     
                
  The original Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar will not work with either Office 2003 or Office 2007 on Windows XP, Vista or 7.  If you would like an equivalent bar that will work with XP or Vista, you will find a great solution on this page (but not for Windows 7 users).

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.

 
 
About the original Office Shortcut Bar

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.  
  Fig 1 (below)  This screenshot proves the much-lamented Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar can still live on for anyone who wants it, complete with a new, smarter look and feel.  The icons shown below are the same ones which were common to the later releases of the Office Shortcut Bar, though there are always slight differences in practice depending on one's installed version of Office.  If you hover your mouse over the icons in the picture you will see tool tips saying what the icons, or groups of icons, are for...
Fig 1
Fig 1


  Tips  
  1   Power-users of Microsoft Office and the Internet  
    You can put shortcuts on our office bar for anything you like, not just to Office applications, if there is space.  You can add local-shortcuts to folders you open frequently, to files you edit or refer to frequently, or to your scanner or OCR app etc.  You can add internet-shortcuts direct to Hotmail, Gmail, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, Spotify etc., or to your FTP address if you upload web pages via Windows Explorer.  In fact to anything you use a lot.  To add new local shortcuts use the right-hand mouse button to drag any existing shortcut from anywhere on the Start /Programs /Accessories menus onto the office toolbar.  To add internet shortcuts, right-click on the desktop > New > Shortcut > type in a URL e.g. www.shoppz.com > Next > type in a name for the shortcut > Finish > use the right-hand mouse button to move the shortcut onto the office toolbar.  
  2 Running old versions of MS Office on Windows XP or Vista  
     Not everybody who changed to a Windows XP machine realised that, if they still had the disks for an old Microsoft Office suite i.e. Office 97, 98 or 2000, their old version of Office would still run happily on Windows XP (except for Outlook 97).  It was never compulsory to change to a later version of Office.  And, if users did not change, they could still have their old friend, the original OSB running on XP.  We are not suggesting, however, that anybody with a later, more sophisticated version of Office already installed should revert to an older version in order to try to use the original OSB.  Their solution would obviously be to download the appropriate zip file from this page.

If you are using Windows Vista, the only 'old' version of Office said to run largely trouble-free on Vista is Office 2003.  That version did not include the Microsoft OSB so, again, the solution would be to download the appropriate zip file below left.
 
  3 Microsoft's alternatives to the Office Shortcut Bar  
     On the Microsoft website, two workarounds were offered for Office 2003 users who were unhappy at the removal of the official Office Shortcut Bar.  One suggestion was to pin shortcuts to all the Office programs on the primary Start menu.  The other was to put shortcuts to all the Office programs on the Quick Launch bar.  Neither of those proposals would satisfy anybody who had previously been used to the convenience and visual comfort of the classic OSB.  A far better solution is the one on this page.  
  4 Auto-Hide  
     After adding our office toolbar, you can, if you prefer, right-click on it and choose Auto-Hide from the context menu.  In this mode, the office toolbar will normally be hidden and will appear briefly only when you mouse over to that side of the screen because you want to use the bar.  When on Auto-Hide, the bar is probably best docked on the LHS - as that will stop it from appearing accidentally when you are trying to use the vertical scroll bars in other programs' maximised windows.  However, the bar is at its most efficient when on permanent view, either along the top of the screen or down the side, as depicted in Fig 1.  
  5 If a window's Close (X) button is obscured behind the office toolbar  
     You may find, if deploying our office toolbar down the RHS of the screen that, when opening Internet Explorer or some other regular application, the Close (X) button at the top RH corner of the program's window might be hidden behind the vertical toolbar.  This problem is not caused by our toolbar, and is also easily cured.  It may occur if the window of the opened program is floating and is sitting too far over to the right.  To fix that cause, drag the whole window slightly to the left, until the Close button is visible, and resize the window as necessary to fit the available space.  Close the program's window by holding down the Ctrl key, then clicking File > Close.  Reopen the program, and it will open at the adjusted size and position with its X button no longer obscured behind the office toolbar.  Another cure is simply to maximise the offending program's window.  To do that, if the Maximise button is also obscured, right-click on the program's button on the taskbar and, from the context menu, choose Maximize.  If you were to find, on the menu, that the window is already maximised (i.e. the Maximize option is greyed-out), but the right-hand edge of the maximised window is, nevertheless, tucked behind the office toolbar, that would mean your computer has experienced a Windows Explorer kernel fault during the current session which you were probably not aware of.  To fix the kernel fault, simply close all programs you have opened and do a normal restart of the computer.  When you reopen the same or any other program, in a maximised window, you will find its buttons will now be within the RHS boundary set by the office toolbar.  End of problem.  
  6 Windows 7 users  
     We have been a thorn in Microsoft's side by keeping an office shortcut bar going for another seven years after they first wanted to kill off their original.  They finally did us in with the release of Windows Vista, almost, by removing the Windows 'New Toolbar...' feature which our sidebar had previously exploited.  However, we knew of an alternative procedure from the days of Windows 98 which they must have forgotten was still lurking in the Windows' code.  The alternative method still worked in Vista, so we were able to help all Vista's Office users after all.  That must be the real reason why they rushed out Windows 7, to close that last loophole to us!  It is with regret, therefore, that we have to advise Windows 7 users that our alternative method no longer works either for them.  However, all is not necessarily lost.  We have always had a second version whereby the standard Office 2007 shortcuts are available on a pull-up menu instead of a sidebar.  This is a neat solution which works on all Windows including, fortunately, Windows 7.  To learn more, click the 'related' link on the left.  
 
 
 
 
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First posted here 17.11.04    Last amended 15.11.09 (dmy)    Copyright (C) 2004-2009 PM Designs   All Rights Reserved