Help Window as Toolbar (2000 SR1)

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Thank you for this post. I had thought that this behaviour was just one of those annoying things I would have to live with having moved from Office 97 to Office2000, like the loss of MDI interface in Word. Now I have help and application screens working the way I like again

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When using Excel, Word, etc., I prefer to work with the app maximized.

Soon after getting Office 2000, I noticed that the help window would automatically cause the app window to no longer be maximized, instead to fill up about half of the left side of the screen, the help window filling up the right half.

I think Microsoft’s idea was, you can look at the help topic while you do your work, without having to switch back and forth all the time.

I really hated this behavior, because I prefer to have help in the background, the app maximized, and quickly Alt+Tab between them. Every time I did this, I had to re-maximize the app, or close Help.

Somehow, I caused this behavior to go away and I was happy. Many months later (today), the behavior returned, for no apparent reason. The last thing I remember doing was dragging the Help window around a little bit.

Well, I discovered the root cause. If you drag the help window to the right side of the screen, it suddenly becomes a sort-of auto-hide toolbar, attached to the right side. When you minimize it, it turn into a line about 6 pixels wide and running the entire height of the right side. When you hover on that line, it pops out, to cover about half the right hand side. To get rid of this sad situation, you make it pop out, then drag it by the window title bar out onto the desktop area, it goes back to being a regular window.

Note by HansV: the link originally placed here was removed because the web page it pointed to doesn’t exist any more

Thanks for letting me vent on this very annoying bit of trivia.

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