Meryl's Notes Blog
Things wordy, geeky, and webbyWordToys
Monday, September 13th, 2004 at 10:07 AM |The name is exactly what WordToys is, toys for MS Word. As soon as I start playing with it, I am hooked. The program puts colorful and high quality icons around Word for easy identification and accessing. It also enhances some of the existing Word features and you know which ones because the icons have been replaced with a colorful one.
The numbering and bullets icons are two examples of enhanced features. Before WordToys, when clicking on these icons, a window pops up and you modify them to your liking. After a WordToys makeover, clicking on the icon brings a fly-out menu and you can select what you want from there. This means fewer clicks or keyboard shortcuts because there are no windows to open and close. As soon as you select what you want, Word puts it there and the menu closes.
Symbols and special characters are awkward to add. Many don’t use these often enough to remember the shortcuts, but when it comes time to use it, it is wieldy. WordToys has an icon for each. For symbols, a handful of common symbols appears in the menu. If you use a couple of others often, configure the menu to add those symbols. After that, you can click the symbols icon and then your symbol.
The special characters icon is a time saver. When you type words like resumé or cliché, you need the accented é. Lots of work for one letter. Click on the characters icon, select ‘e’, and then select the accented é. All the other e’s are available in the same menu.
For some of the icons, you can add your favorites for quicker accessing. For instance, the default font icon has arial, courier, and Times New Roman. I add verdana and georgia to the list. It’s nice not having to deal with the long list of fonts even though I use the shortcuts to get there. The WordToys font icon is easier to use than shortcuts.
The icons on the left are color-coded and sorted by groups. The first set of icons are blue. These are related to document and file management. Red is formatting (font sizes, type, copy / paste, bullets). Orange is content like thesaurus, bookmarks, and special characters. Green is environment where you can zoom in and out, arrange the windows, and other things beyond the Word application.
No catch. The personal edition is free and has no sneaky things built-in it to make you mad. Romke (the developer) hopes you will like it so much that you’d upgrade to the paid professional edition to get more features. View a comparison of features between personal and professional editions.
The best part about new toys is playing with them and discovering what they can do. So I’ll leave it to you to find its other cool features. Have fun with WordToys.
Free. v1.0.3. 1.6M download.
Works with Word XP and 2003. Word 2000 edition available now (download). WordScripting must be enabled. If you haven’t messed with WordScripting, then you should be fine.
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WordToys – Free
The name is exactly what WordToys is, toys for MS Word. As soon as I start playing with it, I am hooked. The program puts colorful and high quality icons around Word for easy identification and accessing. It also enhances…
I want it. Thank you
When is Toys for Word 2000 expected, please, for free download?
Shall be obliged if you laerted me!
thank you.
Dr. Banerjee
Bill S. asks:
I am running the free version of Word Toys on XP Pro with Office 2003 and I like it very much. There is though one annoyance. It concerns the button that shows up at the bottom left of the screen and it shows the document name. Clicking the button brings up the Auto Pilot commands. At the bottom of my screen I also display the Drawing, and the Tables & Borders tool bars. The problem concerns when I start Word this button always starts on a new line. Example I have the Drawing and the Tables tool bars on one line and when Word starts the document button now starts a new line. I drag the 2 tool bars onto the same line as the document button and usually the program remembers the setting so that on subsequent start-ups the document button, and the 2 tool bars will all be on the same line. But when I start-up Word again the document button occupies its own line and I have to drag the 2 tool bars onto the same line as the button to save space at the bottom of the screen. I have tried to drag the document button but it will not move. Is there any way to get the program to remember the settings so that when Word starts all of the tool bars and the document button remain on the same line?
Rom of WordToys answers:
I see your problem, but I’m afraid I can’t solve it for you. The WordToys Navigation Bar needs the full width of the screen, so it can’t share a line with other toolbars. The best thing you can do is open the Toys menu and disable the Doc Navigation Bar.
Meryl:
Thank you for the heads up on WordToys. I still am using the 2000 Edition and WordToys has eliminated the irritation of inserting symbols.
Hugs
Dri-Anna
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