The TaskPane in Office 2003 wastes a lot of valuable screen space and is a pain in my backside.
I thought I could easily turn it off. Under View Toolbars, Customize, uncheck TaskPane.
The classic fix is to open normal.dot, change whatever and save. I’ve been doing this since Office 97.
here’s the Microsoft instructions
The problem is Win7 has changed stuff. First, normal.dot is in a new location. I had to search to find it.
C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
Second, when you open normal.dot the View, Toolbars menu no longer shows TaskPane. Neither does Toolbars customize have Taskpane as an option to uncheck.
I even tried saving normal.dot That blasted Taskpane still pops up when Word opens.
Back to Google… I found this microsoft answer…
I searched in RegEdit for DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane. It’s not found. I manually navigated to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General. There’s no key that looks anything like DoNotDismiss.
Man this is kicking my ass. I need to kill this TaskPane once and for all. I’m beginning to wonder if Win7 is to blame? Microsoft claims Office 2003 with SP3 is 100% compatible. But, is it really?
The only time I can get rid of Taskpane is if I open a saved document that had it turned off.
help! please.
Ace