Putting a Macro Name on the Quick Access Toolbar

Dan assigned a few macros to the Quick Access Toolbar. All the macros use the same generic icon. He can change the icon but wonders if it is possible to have the name of the macro shown on the toolbar or even a few letters instead of an icon.

Yes and no. (Don't you love answers like that?) Word isn't nearly as customizable as it used to be before Word 2007, but you can still make some changes. Word doesn't allow you to place text-only labels on the Quick Access Toolbar. You can, however, modify what the user sees when he or she hovers the mouse over the icon for your macro. Assuming you've already added the macro icon to the QAT, follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. At the left of the dialog box click Customize (Word 2007) or Quick Access Toolbar (later versions of Word). (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Quick Access Toolbar area of the Word Options dialog box.

3. At the right side of the dialog box you should see the items you previously added to the QAT, including your macros. Select one of the macros.
4. Click the Modify button. (It will only be active if you select a macro in step 3). Word displays the Modify Button dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Modify Button dialog box.

5. Modify the information in the Display Name field, at the bottom of the dialog box.
6. Click OK to accept your changes.
7. Click OK to close the Word Options dialog box.

At this point you'll see absolutely no difference in how your macro appears on the Quick Access Toolbar; it still looks like whatever icon you specified. The difference is when you hover the mouse pointer over the icon. When you do, the ToolTip that appears reflects whatever you entered in the Display Name field (step 5).

There are tweaks you can do to control how tools appear on the QAT. Many of those are covered in this article at Greg Maxey's site:

https://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/modify_qat_button_image_text.html

Even if you work through all the tweaks you can find, you'll quickly discover that Word simply doesn't allow you to replace the graphic icon with text like it used to allow in older versions of the program. The only thing you can do is give a good deal of thought to picking an icon that reflects what the macro does.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13331) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021.