Are you missing your Word Toolbars?

(other Word problems like crashes or freezes?  Read my full Word Troubleshooting Tutorial)

Here's a few things you can try:

1. Sometimes, you've accidentally set your screen to "Full Screen" and this view does not show your toolbars, so the first thing to do is hit your Escape key on your keyboard and if you are in Full Screen mode, this will return you to normal mode and your toolbars will be back.

2. If this doesn't do it, go to your View menu and select Toolbars. This will show your list of Toolbars.  Make sure both Standard and Formatting are checked.

3. If any toolbar is showing as checked on the toolbar list but still not appearing on your screen, you can go to your Tools menu and click on Customize.  In there, click on the Toolbars tab and select the toolbar that is missing in the list and hit the Reset button to see if it comes back.

4. However, if it's your Menu Bar that is missing (the one that shows File, Edit, View, etc.), you obviously can't go to any menu to fix it ... or If none of the above suggestions bring your missing toolbars back ... then your Data folder in your Windows Registry is probably corrupt and you will have to follow these directions to replace it with a new one:

This is very safe if you do it EXACTLY as I say:

1. First, make sure Word is closed.

2. Go to your Start button and click on Run. In the Run box, type regedit.

3. When the registry editor comes up, in the pane on the left, click on the plus signs beside the keys to navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 9.0\ Word.  (Note: the 9.0 refers to Word 2000, if you use Word 97, you will see 8.0, Word 2002 is 10.0, and Word 2003 is 11.0)

4. Inside the Word folder, you will see a folder called "Data". Click on the Data folder once to highlight it, then go to the Registry menu and choose Export Registry File.

5. A box will come up that looks like the Save As box. Choose to save it to your desktop so you can find it if you need to. Then name it something like WordData or something and export it to your desktop.

6. Then right click on the Data folder inside the registry editor again and choose Delete.

7. Then close the registry editor and open Word again and see if your toolbars are back.

8. If they are, then it worked and you can delete the reg file you put on your desktop. If the problem isn't fixed, then you can just close Word and double click on this reg file and it will put your registry right back to the way it was before you deleted the Data folder.

But if it DOES work, be SURE to delete that registry key on your desktop cuz if you accidentally double click it in the future, Word's toolbars will be messed up again.

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WANT TO TOUCH THEIR REGISTRY: Here's another thing you can try.  Robin Upton created a utility that is free to download. It's called Word Templates Properties Debugger and it includes a feature that lets you activate or deactivate toolbars in Word with one click.

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