Disabling MS Word task bars & menus

April 20, 2004 2:20 PM

MS Word 2003 task panes: when I start Word, I get a "getting started" side bar and an Adobe Acrobat tool menu that I can't seem to permanently disable. This is driving me bonkers.

I found Tools>Options>View>Startup Task Pane, and I have disabled it. I have found Right Click > Customize >Toolbars>Delete, but neither solve my problem. I suspect those .dot templates might have something to do with it, but I never figured those out. Please, AskMe, won't you help?

posted by muckster to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I tried those two steps you mentioned and the "getting started" thing does not come back.
posted by falconred at 3:52 PM on April 20, 2004

If you have the full version of Acrobat I believe the taskpanes, added menu (to the right of Help), and make pdf button are all controlled by a macro in the global template. I don't know exactly how Acrobat looks in Word 2003 as I am apperently runnig 2002. If you go to Tools>macros>security>trusted sources you can prevent acrobat from loading by not trusting it. Don't know if this answers your question though. To create a pdf you'd have to print to distiller directly (or pdfmaker)
posted by Grod at 6:02 PM on April 20, 2004

Thanks, Grod -- that's halfway there. Turning macros off killed Adobe, but I'm still getting that idiotic "Getting Started" pane. I don't know why falconred is having more luck--maybe my Word is possessed?
posted by muckster at 12:58 PM on April 21, 2004