[Fyre4ce]

Lounge lizards,

I need help with Windows. I know - why am I asking on a Mac forum? Because it's probably the only place I'm likely to get sympathy for my ignorance.

Many Windows programs automatically shorten the drop-down menus (File, Edit, etc.) to only commands you've recently given it. To see the whole menu, you must click the little double-arrow that appears at the bottom. Well, it drives me nuts and I simply can't take it anymore. I have a large screen at high resolution and I don't need the savings in screen area. I tried google-searching for it, but honestly I don't even know what to call it. Does anyone know how to turn this bloody feature off??

Thanks!

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Fyre4ce

I need help with Windows. I know - why am I asking on a Mac forum? Because it's probably the only place I'm likely to get sympathy for my ignorance.

I'm automagically translating that as "Because I love you all and you rock"...

So...

In Word, for example...

Right click on an empty space in one the toolbars.
Select "customize" from the drop down.
Go to the "Options" tab of the resulting dialog.
Fiddle about with the check boxes in the top half of that box (what to click depends on what version of the software you're running, IIRC).

[rickey939]

You mean, Windows isn't user-friendly afterall?

Damn!

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by rickey939

Damn!

Seconded.

-t

[analogika]

I believe they're called "smart menus" or "personalized menus". At least the Start Menu horror can be turned off via Start --> Settings --> Taskbar.

Searching for those terms should probably give you a way to disable that interface atrocity throughout the system.

[DarwinX]

If it's M$ Office:

Open word. Go to the "Tools" menu.
Click "Customize..."
Click the "Options" tab.
Check "Always show full menus" and uncheck "Show full menus after short delay".

That will fix it for the entire M$ Office Suite.

After that look for similiar settings in other programs and as analogika said, that should help you as far as system wide.

Hope that helps.

[nredman]

does windows always have alot of crap running in the background. my wife told me that lately her dell laptop has been slow - when you look at all the processes running you can see why. i wonder if all those things even need to be running. there was one for itunes & ipod that she wasnt even using. anyways i think i have the solution, i'll just toss it off the balcony.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by nredman

does windows always have alot of crap running in the background. my wife told me that lately her dell laptop has been slow - when you look at all the processes running you can see why. i wonder if all those things even need to be running. there was one for itunes & ipod that she wasnt even using. anyways i think i have the solution, i'll just toss it off the balcony.

Uhmm, I don't want to be the party pooper, but OS X is NOT exactly skimpy with background processes either. To a novice, that'll be a lot of confusion, too.

Just run "top -uw" in the Terminal and ask your wife what she thinks of that

-t