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Quick Fix for Bloated Toolbars

The toolbars that come with Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer 4 or later can be powerful time-savers. But they can also get in your way when you're trying to see the greatest number of files or get the biggest view of a Web page. If you've already customized your system to add and remove the toolbars and buttons you don't need, your only apparent choice is to turn off toolbars one at a time when they're in the way and turn them back on later. What a pain.

But not so fast. If you just want to get toolbars out of the way quickly and restore them later, you do have other options. The first is to press F11 to use Explorer's full-screen mode. This not only gives you the biggest view possible, it also collapses the tools and menu into a single bar. If the menu bar is not present, right-click on the toolbar and select it from the drop-down list. Press F11 again to return to normal view.

Another quick fix for screen real-estate problems is simply to position the pointer on the bottom edge of the bottom toolbar (the boundary between the bar and the file list or Web page) and then drag up or down. Dragging up collapses the bars to the smallest number of items possible, while dragging down restores a more expansive view.

This technique won't display any toolbars that are turned off in the View, Toolbars menu; it will only condense or stretch. However, it will turn text labels on and off for the Standard Buttons toolbar. You'll have to drag up to turn the labels off, and drag down to redisplay them.

If you have Windows 2000 or a version of Windows with Internet Explorer 5, you can prevent the text labels from being affected: In Windows 2000, just right-click the toolbar and choose Customize. From the "Text options" drop-down list, choose Selective text on right and click Close. In the future, dragging the toolbar edge won't affect text labels.

Other versions of Windows don't let you customize the Explorer toolbar directly; but you can fix that by making the corresponding adjustment in the Internet Explorer 5 browser. In Windows 9x, display a Web page in Explorer--just type a Web address into the Address bar, even if you're using the Windows Explorer file manager. Right-click the Standard Buttons toolbar (the one that contains the Forward, Back, Stop, and Refresh buttons) and choose Customize.From the "Text options" drop-down list, choose Selective text on right and click Close. Then you can go back to viewing whatever files or Web page you prefer. The next time you drag the toolbar up or down to resize it, the text labels will remain unaffected.