How can I establish an Office toolbar on the Windows desktop? The computer is running Office 2003.

Unfortunately the more recent versions of Office do not include an Office toolbar, like that included in Office 2000. However, Windows XP allows you to create your own toolbars which can mimic the old-style Office toolbar. Minimise all open windows so the Windows desktop displays. Then, right-click on the taskbar and select ‘Toolbars’ > ‘New Toolbar’. You will need to select the folder which will store the shortcuts to be present on this new toolbar. You can create this folder wherever you like, but for simplicity I suggest you create a new folder named ‘Office Toolbar’ under the ‘My Documents’ folder. Once the folder has been created, select the folder and click OK. You will now notice the new toolbar has been created and should be displayed in the taskbar. You next need to add some shortcuts to this folder. To do this, simply copy into the newly created ‘Office Toolbar’ folder the shortcuts you wish to appear on the toolbar. The easiest method is go into the Start menu, find a shortcut you wish to put on the toolbar, right-click on the shortcut and select ‘Copy’, and then ‘Paste’ the shortcut into the ‘Office Toolbar’ folder. Once this is done, the shortcuts should immediately start appearing in the new toolbar. After you have finished copying the necessary shortcuts into the Office Toolbar folder we need to reposition the Office Toolbar. If you are unable to move the Office Toolbar from the taskbar, this is because the taskbar will be locked. Right-click on the taskbar and you will notice there is a tick next to ‘Lock the Taskbar’. Click ‘Lock the Taskbar’ and the tick should disappear, and the taskbar will be unlocked. Now you should be able to drag the Office Toolbar off the taskbar and into a different position, such as along the right-hand side of the screen.