Does Office 2000 Shortcut Bar honor the alphabetic sort order of menus?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dario de Judicibus
  • Start date Start date
D

Dario de Judicibus

Since the bars in my OSB cannot be rearrenged according to my wishes, I
wonder if there is another mechanism that forces them to have a different
order. I am getting crazy. Which is the registry key that should be set to
ensure that once you move a bar to a certain position you can find it at
THAT position at next reboot? This is the way it work on other computers of
mine, but it looks like their registry keys are the same of those one in the
computer where bars do not honor *my* sort order! (I am speaking of order of
bars in OSB, not of buttons in bars!)

Thank you in advance

P.S. Any good MS guy who could share with us the registry key settings for
OSB?

Dario de Judicibus
 
Dario;

These are the ones that I was able to find.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Shortcut Bar

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Folde
rs
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\Shortcut Bar\
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\Shortcut Bar\Office\

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1708537768-1580436667-1202660629-1003\Software\Microsoft
\Office\10.0\Shortcut Bar
 
Wesley Vogel said:
Dario;

Are you talking about the Places Bar??
Click to expand...

No, I am speaking of user defined bars. I have several bars in addition to
the Office one (usually black): one for Graphics tools, one for Media tools,
one for Communications tools, one for Development tools, and so forth. I
gave to each bar a different colour and of course I wish to order them
according to importance (Office Shortcut Bar is vertical, on the right side
of my desktop).

Wished bar order is

Office
System
Pubs
Gfx
Media
Comms
Devel
Games

I have the same layout on other computers. However, on my home computer,
bars do not remain in that order. Every time I boot my PC, they go back to
another order which I cannot change. If I change bar order, it remains for
the whole session, but at next reboot it changes back again. This is the
ONLY PC where this happens. Hoever I cannot find in the various Shortcut Bar
registry key any significant differences among PCs to explain the different
behaviour of my home desktop.

:( It is more than 6 months I am trying to troubleshoot this problem.

DdJ
 
Wesley Vogel said:
Dario;

HOWTO: Place a Custom Bitmap on an Office Commandbar Button
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;198522#appliesto
Click to expand...

Wes, sorry, but I do not understand. I read that document, but how can it
support me to ensure that bar order is the one I desire? Can you be more
specific? Are you sure it is the correct reference. Probably my fault, but I
see no relation between my problem and that link. Thank you in advance.

DdJ
 
You're talking about the Office Shortcut Bar (MSOFFICE.EXE), right? If so, I ran Regmon
(http://www.sysinternals.com/) while altering the order of the Office, Desktop, & Favorites toolbar.
It appears the order is stored in one of the final bytes of the REG_Binary value:

"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Shortcut Bar\Toolbars\Office\Buttons"

That is, each subkey of Toolbars, which coresponds to one toolbar, stores its list order in the
buttons value.

Whenever you rearrange it, the configuration before your alterations is stored in:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Shortcut Bar\Toolbars\Office\OldBtns"

So, I'm not sure why yours is misbehaving, but perhaps it is restoring the old settings when it
restarts. To test this: rearrange the toolbar to your liking, and then copy the data from the
'Buttons' value to the 'OldBtns' value. You would need to do this under each subkey of
'Toolbars' -- Accessories, Desktop, etc.

If that doesn't solve your problem, you should download Regmon, monitor the key, & see what process
is changing it.

Good Luck & post back,
Keith
 
Thank you very much, Keith. Really a lot of useful info. I'll try what you
suggest and report back results.

DdJ
 
Keith, I tried with apply your suggestions, but with no result. Here is what
I did:
---
I am trying to understand why the Office 2000 Shortcut Bar does not maintain
the order of bars at startup. I already asked this question here and I was
told to look at Buttons key in ShortcutBar registry key for hardcoded
sequence numbers. I did, and here is the result.

What I did:

1. I closed OSB
2. I called regedit
3. I moved to ShorcutBar key - Inside that key are the various bars
4. In each bar I removed OldBtns
5. In each bar I modified the binary data of Buttons as follows:
I changed the fourth to last byte to the desired order (01, 02, 03...0A,
....0E)
6. I moved to path where Oficce stores bar links and I remove all *.tmp
files
7. I restarted OSB

No way. I still got bar in the old order. But where da*n OSB got that
sequence, since non tmp file was anymore available, registry had no more
OldBtns and Buttons contained the new sequence?

I'm getting crazy. Please, help! Is anybody really expert of registry keys
for OSB? I just understood by hacking the registry that last two bytes
contains the flag visible/hidden, previous two bytes contains the sequence
order of bar, and the previous four some other flag that sometimes is 02, 06
or 00. Most of the remaining stuff are the filenames of .lnk for buttons in
bar.

P.S. I am speaking of BARS, notbuttons in bars.
 
Hmmm....

Question: Are the settings saved within the same session if you exit and then restart the shortcut
bar? If so, that means you can export the 'good' registry key and compare it to the export of a
'bad' registry key. (I use excel to compare registry items: import each reg file into a single
column -> copy the column from one into the other -> add a column for line numbers and a column
comparing the two text values, then use sort to bring all the 'false' comparisions to the top).

I'm guessing you're autostarting the shortcut bar. Try canceling that. See if the registry has
been changed before even starting the bar.

Once you know what values are being changed, you've got a good filter for regmon to watch.

If you can't track it down & they're still being changed, you might try modifying the permissions on
the registry key to prevent it from being changed once you have it as you like.


You might see if this could help you get the settings from a working computer over to yours:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;816003

Good Luck! Post Back!
Keith
 
I meant without manually changing any keys -- to see what the behavior of
MSOFFICE.EXE is when closed and then started again. Left to its own
devices, will it remember your layout within a single user session?

No. If I change layout. Close and launch again OSB, I get back the previous
one. It looks like it is carven in stone. :(

DdJ
 
"Keith Miller" <[email protected]> ha scritto nel messaggio
| Hmmm....
|
| Question: Are the settings saved within the same session if you exit and
then restart the
| shortcut bar?

No. It is not a matter of reboot. I cannot preserve my ordering if I close
bar, change keys and launch bar again. It looks like OSB decides bar
ordering according to different criteria NOT stored in registry keys!

DdJ
 
I meant without manually changing any keys -- to see what the behavior of MSOFFICE.EXE is when closed and then started again. Left to its own devices, will it remember your layout within a single user session?

Keith
 
Rats! Then you need to try Regmon to see what's happening. You could also
post in one of the groups specific to Office.

OK. I'll try it and post results. Thank you.
DdJ
 
Rats! Then you need to try Regmon to see what's happening. You could also post in one of the groups specific to Office.

Keith
 
Back
Top