As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve used Word for a long time. And most things in Word XP are the same old stuff. However two things have changed so radically that they totally drive me nuts: mail merge and styles. Now when you use these features you are presented with the Task Pane. As far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on the whole Task Pane concept. Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to it, but mostly it seems like it just gets in the way.
Anyway, I whined about my problems to a Word guru friend of mine and she told me what I could have probably guessed: if you don’t like it, just change it back.
I’ve pointed out many times that if you don’t like something about Word, odds are you can change it. Well, I should have taken my own advice. If you like the old mail merge feature, here’s how you get it back.
1. First show the Mail Merge Toolbar by choosing View|Toolbars and clicking Mail Merge.
2. Choose Tools|Customize and make sure you are in the Commands tab.
3. Under Categories, click All Commands.
4. Now under Commands click MailMergeHelper and drag it to the Mail Merge toolbar. If you also want it on the menu, drag it to the Tools menu (where it used to be).
5. When you are done, click the Close button in the Customize dialog box.
Adding the old style dialog box works the same way. Follow steps 2 and 3. Once you are in the Customize dialog box, click the FormatStyle command and drag it over to the Format menu where it used to be.
Close the Customize dialog box and you’ll find that suddenly a few things look a whole lot more familiar.