August 26, 2008

Remove the Annoying Mini Toolbar in Microsoft Office 2007

Bad mini toolbar!

Have you been typing in Microsoft Word 2007, only to see a miniature toolbar randomly pop up and obstruct your viewing and typing?

That mini toolbar is a new feature in Office 2007. Many people, including myself, find it to be quite a nuisance.

To get rid of that toolbar, and free yourself from its ghost-like appearances, click on the Office button in the top left of your Word screen, go to Word Options, and un-check the Show Mini Toolbar on Selection option located under the Popular tab. Then click Ok and you're set -- no more annoying mini toolbar!

And, if you later decide you miss the toolbar you can always bring it back by rechecking the box.


Note: The mini toolbar will show up in all Microsoft Office 2007 programs: Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, etc. You will have to disable it through the same method above in each program, under Options located at the bottom of the Microsoft Button menu.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

I have unchecked the box and the mini toolbar still remains. Is there something else I can do or is this a glitch in the software?

Anonymous said...

I've got the same issue, I did read somewhere that you can't disable the mini toolbar from appearing when you right click something in one of the office programs.

Unknown said...

I'm sorry for the problems you guys seem to be having. The only suggestion that I could give is to make sure that you click on "OK" after unchecking the "Show Mini-Toolbar". If you click on "Cancel" or the X in the upper corner of the window, the changes will not be saved.

Anonymous said...

Same here. The box is unchecked... but the mini toolbar persists. This has to be a glitch somewhere...

Anonymous said...

I am having exactly the same issues. I have unticked the box, clicked ok. I have even re-started word, I have saved a doucment as a 2007 version and it still pops up when I right click on a word. Very frustrating.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU!!!

Anonymous said...

The problem is that this options only disables the mini toolbar on selection.

E.g. It still remains on right click.

If one finds the way to turn it off everywhere, plz, post the solution !

Unknown said...

I came across a solution that involves messing around with your registry, which can be a very delicate process that I would only recommend for advanced users.

Here is the solution I found courtesy of a comment by user Kevin Ball on this post (http://j.mp/2tF5Ta).

"Kevin Ball:

It IS possible to tun off the Mini Toolbar when right-clicking, but you have to edit the registry to do it:

Run Regedit.exe from Start->Run and go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars\Word

Right-click in the right-hand panel, select New and DWORD Value – name it AllowMenuFloaties and leave the value set to 0.

The entry for Word under Toolbars might not exist unless you’ve already de-selected the option to ‘Show Mini Toolbar on selection’ as per the main article above (this writes a DWORD called AllowSelectionFloaties and sets the value to 0).

This also works for Excel as well, in the Excel folder under Toolbars."

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU CHRIS!!!!! THANK YOU. My Lord I have never seen something so damn stupid and annoying in my life. THAT will fix it people.

Unknown said...

thank you internet gods! i HATE HATE HATE that stupid thing! XD

Anonymous said...

Thank you Chris!!! Whoever you are you have made my day a little bit peaceful. That little box is so annoying.

Anonymous said...

This is a similar problem to the mini toolbar: I use Office 2007 w/Win 7. Recently the Help box has been popping up anytime I'm using Word, Outlook, Excel. How do I turn it off?

Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't know why Microsoft couldn't tell us how to get rid of this. It's the most annoying thing since their animated paperclip.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, I can confirm the registry hack works for Office 14 too. :)