Customize the Places Bar on the Open and Save As Dialog Boxes in Office 2003

The Places Bar in Office 2003 is a bar on the left side of the Open and Save As dialog boxes that provides quick access to folders and drives.

You can customize the Places Bar by adding your own folders and drives to the list. For this example, we will add a folder to the list. To do this, open the Save As dialog box or the Open dialog box. Navigate to the folder you want to add to the Places Bar.

When you are in the desired folder, select Add to “My Places” from the Tools menu in the upper, right corner on the dialog box.

The folder is added to the bottom of the Places Bar. If the list is longer than the Places Bar, scroll arrows display at the bottom and top as needed to allow you to scroll through the list.

After scrolling down, you will see the folder you added at the bottom of the Places Bar.

You can move the folder to a different location in the list. To do this, right-click on the folder and select Move Up from the popup menu. You can also move folders or drives down by selecting Move Down.

We have moved the folder up to the second position on the Places Bar.

You can remove a folder or drive from the Places Bar by right-clicking on it and selecting Remove from the popup menu. You can also rename a folder or drive using the Rename option on the popup menu.

If you want to see all the items on the Places Bar without having to scroll, right-click on any item and select Small Icons from the popup menu.

The following image shows the Places Bar in the Small Icons view.

You can export the registry keys for the custom places you added to the Places Bar and restore them quickly. This saves adding all your custom locations again if you need to reinstall Office. To access the Registry Editor, select Run from the Start menu.

On the Run dialog box, enter “regedit” (without the quotes) in the Open edit box and click OK.

Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office \ 11.0 \ Common \ Open Find \ Places \ UserDefinedPlaces

Right-click on the UserDefinedPlaces key and select Export from the popup menu.

Select a location in which to save your registry file, enter a name for the file in the File name edit box, and click Save.

To close the Registry Editor, select Exit from the File menu.

Now you can open and save your Word 2003 documents more quickly using the customized Places Bar. You can also add removable hard drives, USB devices, floppy drives, network drives, etc. to the Places Bar.