Loving, loathing and forgetting the Quick Access Toolbar

When I first started using the new Microsoft Office 2007 style ribbon or ‘fluid’ user interface (which is what we based the Nitro PDF Professional 5 design on), one of the cool things I liked was the Quick Access Toolbar. If you’re not familiar with it, the Quick Access Toolbar can be placed above or beneath the ribbon area and is always visible. If you look at the screenshots below you’ll see how there’s a small bar of tools along the title bar area when the ribbon is open and closed — that’s the fully customizable Quick Access Toolbar.

The toolbar was designed for a few reasons:

To allow the user to customize the interface.
To allow the user to always access key tools quickly when the ribbon is hidden.
To give the user more screen space when viewing a document.
To allow the user the work efficiently even when the ribbon area is hidden.

If you’re using Microsoft Office 2007 or Nitro Pro 5 and haven ‘t tried it, here’s some quick instructions.

Open Nitro Pro, Word 2007, Excel 2007 or PowerPoint 2007.
Click on the arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar.

Click More Commands and select, remove and order the tools and tasks you’d like quick access to.
Click OK.

It’s pretty neat, isn’t it? The funny thing I’ve found is that I rarely think to use it, instead just selecting tools and performing tasks straight from the ribbon area.

What do you think of the Quick Access Toolbar? Do you use it regularly, plan to use it, or, like me, find it doesn’t really suit the way you work with documents in Microsoft Office and/or Nitro PDF Professional? Share your thoughts on the Quick Access Toolbar here on the PDF Blog.

Chris

Honestly, I’m not a huge user of the Quick Access Toolbar…

I think it would have been more useful back in the old Office (2003 and earlier) interface when there wasn’t the Ribbon to make finding tools so damn easy.

But still, just because it doesn’t float my boat doesn’t mean others won’t find it useful in their day to day tasks.
li

I use it a lot – I had zillion toolbar buttons on my older versions of Excel, and especially Word, so I’m more comfortable with buttons for everything.
Robin Whitaker

I totally dislike the Ribbin thingy – it is a step back from the clarity of the XP based interface to confused logic.
http://kdchant.vision.edu Ken Chant

I constantly use the QA toolbar, and have customised in all my 2007 applications, adding many additional buttons. I find the main ribbon not at all intuitive. Indeed, in my opinion it is much more clumsy than its equivalent in Office 2003.

Ken
Sascha

Never use the QA toolbar myself, I’m always using different machines so with any application, I tend to use the default interface and learn the keyboard shortcuts.

Took me a while to get used to the ribbon layout, both in Office 2007 and Nitro. However I do find it pretty intuitive, rarely having to look in more than one location to find what I need – adding TOC for example I’ll usually first click ‘Insert’, before realising it’s on the ‘References’ ribbon.

In older versions of Office, I know I’d regularly go hunting through the menus one by one looking for a feature. I’d also customize the default toolbars much more to add things that I would need.

The Ribbon interface definitely makes me more productive at least!
Richard Crocker

Totally agree, Sascha. Over the years I’ve found I customise things less and less, instead making use of standard shortcuts and methods to get things done. It lets you jump on any computer and work pretty efficiently.
janicepink

Same here. What may float my boat may only sink others.

Look before you leap.

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Loving, loathing and forgetting the Quick Access Toolbar