Customize the Places Bar in Office 2000 and Office XP

The Places Bar is the gray bar along the left edge of the File-Open and File-Save dialog boxes in Microsoft Office 2000/XP. This bar has five buttons, no more and no less, each of which points to a different folder on your system. By default, these places are History, Documents, Desktop, Favorites, and Web Folders. (How many of us really use Web Folders...) It is actually possible to customize these places, although it's not documented, and it's far from easy. Here's how to do it.

Note: Details on customizing the Places Bar used in most non-Office file dialogs in Windows Me and Windows 2000 can be found in Windows Me Annoyances, the book.

Note: make sure all Microsoft Office applications are closed before you proceed. Don't open any Office applications until you're done, either - they'll screw up all your settings.

• Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
• Expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 9.0\ Common\ Open Find\ Places (replace the 9.0 with 10.0 for Office XP).
• You should see two subkeys here: StandardPlaces and UserDefinedPlaces.
• First, you'll have to clear out the existing items; otherwise your custom items won't be shown. One-by-one, highlight each key under StandardPlaces (e.g. Desktop, Recent), and select New and then DWORD Value from the Edit menu. Name the new value Show, and leave the value of 0 unchanged.
• Don't worry if you want to keep one or more of the defaults; it's easier in the long run to clear them all and then recreate the five you want to keep. Also, make sure the values you add are DWORD values; otherwise, this won't work.
• Next, highlight the UserDefinedPlaces key, and add five new keys. Name them Place1, Place2, Place3, Place4, and Place5.
• In each of these new keys, you'll want to create the following values:
  • String value called Name: this contains the caption that will appear under this place (example: Desktop).
  • String value called Path: this contains the full folder path for the place (example: c:\windows\desktop).
  • DWORD value called Index: this allows you to choose how your places are sorted. Enter 0 for the first place, 1 for the second, 2 for the third, and so on. The key names typed in the previous step (Place1, Place2, etc.) do not determine the sort order.
• The following optional values are also supported here:
  • DWORD value called View: this allows you to choose between List view (1), Details view (2), Summary view (3), or Preview view (4).
  • DWORD value called ArrangeBy: this allows you to choose the sort order: Name (1), Type (2), Size (3), or Date (4).
  • DWORD value called SortAscending: this allows you to choose whether the contents are sorted A-Z (1) or Z-A (0).
• After you've entered all the new places, open any Office application to try it out.

This may require some trial-and-error to get it right. One of the things that makes this difficult, however, is that Office tends to indiscriminately add new keys and values, which can clutter up what you're working on. If you've done it right, however, the seemingly random keys and values that appear will have no effect on what actually appears in the dialogs.

• To allow more than five places on the Places Bar, expand the registry branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 9.0\ Common\ Open Find\ Places (replace the 9.0 with 10.0 for Office XP).
• Select New and then DWORD Value from the Edit menu.
• Name the new value ItemSize, and leave the value of 0 unchanged.

• If you just want to resort the items shown without adding anything new, see Microsoft's Technical Note.

Note that some customization in Office XP can be done from within the program (and without editing the Registry), but it's rather limited. Note that this does not apply to Office 2000. Here's how you do it:

• Open any Office XP application, and then select Open from the File menu.
• Right-click on any existing place icon, and select Move Up or Move Down.
• To add a new place to the Places bar, navigate to the parent folder of the folder you wish to add (not the folder itself), highlight it in the window, click Tools (in the upper right) and select Add to "My Places".
• You can delete any custom places my right-clicking their icons on the bar and selecting Remove, but you won't be able to remove the standard places without editing the Registry as described above.