Task Bar Problems

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I have now worked for two separate companies sharing the same “feature.” If I understand correctly, there should be indiv. icons on the Task bar for each document a user has open. However, in both offices I’ve been in this works for Word docs, but not for Excel or PowerPoint. Is this some weird coincidence, or is this a known issue?

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Not an issue, per se. It sounds as if both companies have decided to Run Word 2000, but have not upgraded the Excel or Powerpoint applications from 95 or 97.

HTH

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Unless — you are not in Word 2000, but are openning separate occurences of Word. A big no-no. Once you have Word open, make sure that new Word documents are opened using the File / Open command in Word.

Sorry for the previous miscue — I tried to delete my prior erroneous post and was disallowed.

HTH

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It’s ok. But we are running 2000 everything, and only one occurence of Word et al. Anything else come to mind?

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Word 2000 has MDI (multiple document interface). There’s no way to turn it off except with a macro. Office 2000 hasn’t been consistent. In Excel 2000 & Powerpoint 2000 also, it’s optional. Tools/Options/Show/& check windows in taskbar.

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Wow. Chalk another one up to stupid-simple-overlooked. Just tried it at home and of course it works. Can’t wait to get to work tonight and test it there as well.

Thanks.

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Just to clarify, Word 2000 is an SDI (Single-Document Interface), not an MDI. This is why a new “instance” of Word is invoked for every document instead of all documents being open in the same parent instance of Word.
Excel and some of the other Office apps mimic this behavior by displaying a taskbar “icon” for each file open, but they are acutally still housed by the same parent instance. In these MDI applications, this behavior can be turned off by unchecking the “Windows in Taskbar” option.

A quick way to tell if an application is an MDI or SDI is to see if the child window can be minimized/restores/maximized in the parent window. MDI applications usually allow this and SDI applications don’t. In Excel, you can minimize the individual workbooks. In Word, you cannot minimize the individual documents without minimizing the main Word window.

HTH

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Thank you for catching that, Scott. I did write it backwards. And the macro download for changing Word 2000 back to MDI is at

http://www.officevba.com/features/1999/11/…a199911hk_f.asp

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