Adding a Work Menu in MS Word

The Work menu is one of the oldest and most obscure features supported by MS Word. The Work menu is basically a Word specific list of your favorite or most often used documents that remains hidden in the Customize dialog box until you drag it out of there and place it on your toolbar. The Work list will hold as many as nine document shortcuts. It is a handy place to store those documents that require regular access.

Follow the steps below to put the Work menu in its place on your toolbar:

• Click on View | Toolbars | Customize.  
   
• Select the Commands tab.
    
• Scroll to the bottom of the Categories list box.  
   
• Select Built-in Menus.  
   
• Drag the Work item to a convenient spot on a toolbar or onto the menu bar and drop it.  
   
• Click Close.

Once the Work menu is in place and you pull down the menu, you will see one item, which is the Add To Work Menu. To place the current document on the list, simply select this command and MS Word will add the document below any others listed. Because there is limited room, if you add a tenth item, MS Word will oust the first document you added off the bottom of the menu.

The documents must remain in their original location and with the same name. Changing either will break the shortcut.

I will tell you how to remove an item or items from the Work menu but with a word of extreme caution, as if you do not pay attention, you could also remove any command from any menu, so you need to be careful.

Having said that, follow the steps below to remove items from the Work menu:

Click CTRL + ALT + hyphen. The pointer will change to a minus sign and you can use it to pull down the menu and select any item you would like to remove. Remember to be careful not to use it on anything but the item you would like to remove. The document will be removed from the Work menu but it will still reside on your hard drive. Remember, that the document on your Work menu is just a shortcut to the document on your hard drive.

Be careful and enjoy!

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