• Home
• Overview
• Programs
• Customize
• Maintenance
• Security
• Networking

• ‹ Programs and Applications
• MS Office Word 2007 Tutorial
• Word 2007 Tutorial
• Explore the interface of Word 2007
• Show or hide the Ribbon
• Options and Settings in Word 2007
• Show or hide the Mini Toolbar
• Show or hide the ruler
• Customize the Quick Access Toolbar
• Change orientation to portrait / landscape
• Change paper size settings
• View document in full screen mode
• Save Word documents as PDF
• Insert an image in your document
• Resize images / pictures
• Crop images / pictures
• Text wrapping: Align image and text
• Add a background image
• Change the page's background color
• The Zoom tool in Word 2007
• Highlight text background in color
• Show formatting symbols
• Insert a header
• Insert a footer
• Insert page numbers
• Insert a page break
• Insert an horizontal line
• Insert links to web pages
• Insert comments in document
• Insert symbols / special characters
• Change page margins
• Insert a table
• Insert a cell
• Delete a cell
• Insert a row
• Delete a row
• Insert a column
• Delete a column
• Split a cell
• Merge cells
• Resize rows (+ row height settings)
• Lookup dictionary definitions
• Check the spelling of your document
• Use the built-in encyclopedia
• Find synonyms for a word
• Document word count
• Convert text case (UC, LC, or TC)
• Manage your applications ›

Show or hide the Mini Toolbar in Microsoft Word 2007

Microsoft Word 2007 introduces the "Mini Toolbar", a floating toolbar with common formatting command that appears once you select text. This very useful functionality can nonetheless be distracting, and Word 2007 lets you turn it on and off as you need. This tutorial explains how to show or hide the Mini Toolbar in Word 2007.

Hide the Mini Toolbar in Microsoft Word 2007

To hide the Mini Toolbar in Word 2007, click on the Office menu, and choose Word Options. From the Word Options dialog that opened, make sure that the "Popular" tab is selected on the left.

This tab aggregates in a single convenient location the most common options and settings in Microsoft Word 2007. Notice that the first checkbox reads "Show Mini Toolbar on selection" - it is checked by default.

To prevent Word 2007 from displaying the Mini Toolbar when you start selecting text, uncheck the Show Mini Toolbar on selection checkbox. Click OK to accept the new option, and you are back inside Word; as test, select some text: the Mini Toolbar remains hidden.

Show the Mini Toolbar in Microsoft Word 2007

To restore the default, and instruct Word 2007 to show the Mini Toolbar whenever you start selecting text, go back to the Options dialog (Office Menu > Word Options), and check the Show Mini Toolbar on selection checkbox. Click OK to validate the new setting, and Word 2007 will resume displaying the Mini Toolbar when you select text.

Manually display the mini toolbar with a right-click

In addition to being automatically displayed when you start selecting text, Word 2007 also displays the mini toolbar when you right-click inside your document, whether any text is selected or not. We discussed above the customizable behavior, through options, that lets you determine whether the mini toolbar will be displayed or not when you start selecting text: this option does not affect the right-click behavior, which will still display the mini toolbar. So, if you have set the mini toolbar not to show when text is selected, just select some text and right click on it to display the mini toolbar (in addition to Word 2007's regular context menu).