Turning Off Dynamic Menus

One of the features introduced in Word 2000 is something I call "dynamic menus." This means that Word keeps track of which options you use the most in your menus, and these are the options it presents you. If you want to see all the menu options, you need to wait a few seconds, or click on the down-pointing arrows at the bottom of any menu.

Dynamic menus can make it a bit easier to get to the choices you make most often, but there is a drawback: It is more difficult to see all the menu-based capabilities of Word. If you want to turn off this feature (thereby forcing Word to always display the full menus), you can follow these steps if you are using Word 2000:

1. Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
2. Make sure the Options tab is selected.
3. Clear the check box to the left of the Menus Show Recently Used Commands First option.
4. Click on OK.

If you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003, the steps are slightly different:

1. Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
2. Make sure the Options tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Select the Always Show Full Menus option.
4. Click on OK.