The case of the missing Word toolbar

The menu bar disappeared from Microsoft Word on my computer. The ALT key sequences will not bring up the menus as they are supposed to. I still have the menu bars in Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. I uninstalled and then reinstalled Office and the menu ba

The menu bar disappeared from Microsoft Word on my computer. ALT key sequences will not bring up the menus. I still have the menu bars in Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. I uninstalled and then reinstalled Office and the menu bar is still missing in Word. How can I get the menu bar back?

Uninstalling programs does not always remove program information from your system. A large amount of configuration information is stored in the Windows registry and is often left behind by program uninstallers. There are several articles on support.microsoft.com regarding disappearing menu bars.

Some issues can be solved by renaming the normal.dot template file.

Occasionally the menu bar accidentally is dragged out of the program window and can be found hiding in a separate window. The Word menu bar registry setting is found in the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice9.0WordData key.

You can repair a menu bar setting by using the regedit program to rename the Data key to something such as oldData, then exit regedit and restart Word. Word will rebuild the Data key with the correct values, and you should get your menu back.