Menu and Toolbar Problems in Word 2001

Article contributed by Beth Rosengard

There is a venerable (and very annoying) bug in Macintosh Word 2001 which causes submenus and menus to become dysfunctional.  And, just so this bug won’t get lonely, there are a few additional menu and toolbar idiosyncrasies which pop up occasionally to keep it company.

Before trying any of the procedures below, be sure you are fully updated. This article will tell you what you need to know about updating Office/Word 2001.  

Note: If you remove, re-install, or add-to any program, you must re-install its update(s).

There are four procedures in this article:

Dysfunctional Menus/Submenus

Symptoms:  First the submenus, and then the main menus, gray out until the only functional items left are the System menus.

  1. Quit Word.
  2. Navigate to your Word Settings (9) file: You’ll find it in System Folder:Preferences:Microsoft.
  3. Drag the Word Settings (9) file to the desktop and reopen Word. A new Word Settings (9) file will be created.
  4. If all is well, trash the old file. Since the Settings file stores all your Word preferences, you will need to reset these.
  5. If the fix did not work, quit Word, delete the new Settings file that was created and rename the old file back.

This procedure will restore your menus at least 90 per cent of the time. If it does not work for you, then the problem may just be in your Normal template. Follow the steps in the Disappearing Menu Items section below to test your Normal template.

Disappearing Menu Items

Symptoms:  A single menu item, such as the Insert menu, disappears from the Menu Bar.

You have two options here:  The first is to go to View>Toolbars>Customize, highlight Menu Bar and click Reset. If that doesn’t work, you need to test your Normal template:

  1. Quit Word.
  2. Navigate to your Normal template: By default, this is in Applications:Microsoft Office 2001:Templates. If you do not find it there, use Edit:Preferences:File Locations:User Templates:Modify to reveal its location.
  3. Rename the Normal template (for example, to oldNormal) and reopen Word. A new Normal template will be created.
  4. Open Word and test it.
  5. If all is now well, quit Word.
  6. Say Yes if prompted to save the changes to your Normal template (so you don’t discard the new one you just made).
  7. Copy over any important customizations, styles, macros or auto-texts from the old Normal to the new using Organizer.  To learn how, click here. 
  8. Trash the oldNormal template file.
  9. If this did not cure your problem, quit Word, delete the new Normal template, then rename the old Normal back.

The PICTify 1.5 Bug

Symptoms:  Submenus (only) quit working in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but not Entourage.

  1. Open System Folder:Control Panels.
  2. Remove or disable PICTify 1.5. Version 1.5 of PICTify is known to conflict with Office 2001 applications.

Click here for more information on this bug.

Unfamiliar Menus and Toolbars

Your menus and toolbars look different from what you’re used to, including unfamiliar icons on the toolbars.

This one’s easy:

  1. Go to the View menu.
  2. Uncheck Word 5.1 Menus.

Either you checked the Word 5.1 Menus option inadvertently, or you were working with a Word 5.1 document and forgot to uncheck the option.

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