How to reset personal menus in Office XP and Office 2000 programs

This step-by-step article describes how to reset a menu in a Microsoft Office program back to its default first-run condition. In addition, this article describes the following:

• What the "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" feature is.
• Two methods for resetting a menu in an Office program back to its first-run condition.
• Important notes about renaming the PIP files.
• How to turn off the "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" feature.

Office programs have a feature called "Personalized Menus and Toolbars". This feature is shared across all Office programs.

The "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" feature evaluates what menu commands you use and displays only those items that are used most frequently on a shortened version of each menu. By default, when you click a menu and rest the mouse pointer over the menu title, the menu expands to display all menu items.

NOTE: The menu expands only if the Show full menus after a short delay option is selected. (On the View menu, point to Toolbars, click Customize, and then click the Options tab.)

Similarly, toolbars intelligently share space on the screen, based on the toolbar buttons that you use most frequently. As a result, toolbar buttons are promoted or demoted (displayed or hidden), based on a hierarchy that enables multiple toolbars to share a single row. When you click the slider button (>>) on a toolbar, the complete toolbar is quickly displayed. After you click a specific toolbar button, that button is added to the visible portion of the toolbar.

NOTE: When a recently used button is added to the visible portion of the toolbar, a toolbar button that is not recently used may be moved to the hidden portion of the toolbar.

Where Are Personalized Menu and Toolbar Settings Saved?

The "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" settings are saved in a Program name.pip file. After a change is made to a menu, the change is stored in the .pip file, which is in one of the following locations:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows XP:
  C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Office
• Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me):
  C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Office
• Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Me with profiles enabled, or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0:
  C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Office

The PIP files are named as listed in the following table.

How to Reset the Menus to First-Run Condition

These procedures only reset the menus to their first-run condition and do not affect your toolbars.

To reset the menus to their first-run condition, use either of the following methods.

Method 1: Reset My Usage Data (Recommended Method)

1. On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Customize.
2. On the Options tab, click Reset my usage data.
3. Click Yes to the following message:
   This will delete the record of the commands you've used in this application and restore the default set of visible commands to the menus and toolbars. It will not undo any explicit customizations. Are you sure you want to do this?
4. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box.

Method 2: Rename the Program PIP File

1. Right-click Start and then click Explore on the shortcut menu.
2. Browse to the folder that is specified in the "Where Are Personalized Menus and Toolbar Settings Saved?" section of this article.
3. Right-click the program PIP file for which you want to reset menu usage, and then click Rename on the shortcut menu.
4. Rename the PIP file to Program name.old, and then press ENTER.

IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT RENAMING PIP FILES

After the Setup and configuration of the Microsoft Office programs, a default set of Program name.pip files is saved in the following folder:

Office XPOffice 2000Office 2003 If you rename these program default PIP files (not recommended), the Office program attempts to reconfigure itself with the Windows Installer program, and either of the following may occur.

• You may receive the following error message:
  Error 1706. Setup cannot find the required files. Check your connection to the network, or CD-ROM drive. For other potential solutions to this problem, see C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\1033\SETUP.HLP.
  For more information about this error message, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  298021  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298021/ ) "Error 1706...", "Installation Ended Prematurely..." when you try to run setup
  253768  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253768/ ) "Error 1706...", "Installation Ended Prematurely..." when you run Office setup
  If you click OK to this error message, the installer program backs out of its changes and attempt to automatically configure the program again. To allow the Office program to correctly configure itself, place the Office CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive, and then click OK.
• You may receive the following message:
  The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM or other removable disk that is not available.
  
  Insert the 'Microsoft Office XP' disk and click OK.
  If you click OK without inserting the Office CD-ROM, you receive the following error message:
  The path 'Microsoft Office XP Professional with FrontPage' cannot be found. Verify that you have access to this location and try again, or try to find the installation package 'PROPLUS.MSI' in a folder from which you can install the product Microsoft Office XP Professional with FrontPage.
  To allow the Office program to correctly configure itself, place the Office CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive, and then click OK to the error message. Click OK in the dialog box that is requesting the Office CD-ROM.

How to Turn Off the "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" Feature

IMPORTANT: Following this procedure in one Office program changes all of your Office programs to use full menus.

To turn off the "Personalized Menus and Toolbars" feature and display only full menus in your Office programs, follow these steps:

1. Start one of the Office programs listed at the beginning of this article.
2. On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Customize.
3. On the Options tab, click to select the Always show full menus check box, and then click Close.

For more information about menus, click Microsoft program Help on the Help menu, type menus in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topics returned.