How to Disable Office Personalized Menus

Contributed by davak October 21, 2003  
Tagged: Microsoft Office

Versions of Office 2000 and later feature personalized menus that show the most frequently used menu options first. Thus, the rest of the menu options are hidden initially. Many users find this annoying. This recipe describes how to disable it and how to work with it more quickly.

If you have personalized menus enabled, you can show the entire menu without any items hidden by double clicking any of the menu titles (such as File, View, Insert, etc.)

If you wish to disable personalized menus, follow the following steps:

-= Office 2000 =-

1. Select the Tools menu
2. Click Customize
3. Select the Options tab
4. Click to deselect the Menus show recently used commands first option

-= Versions of Office After 2000 =-

1. Select the Tools menu
2. Click Customize
3. Select the Options tab
4. Click Always Show Full Menus