The Reviewing Toolbar (Word XP)

[Mesaka]

Hi once again.
Bear with me if this is something most of you are familiar with, but... Can someone explain the rationale behind the behavior of Word's Reviewing toolbar, and it's quasi-random appearance when I open documents? It seems to pop up whenever I open a file these days, even if the file contains no revisions or tracked changes. I think there's some connection between opening (or having opened) an email attachment in Outlook XP (here at work) and Word's assumption that I'm too dumb to remember that this is someone else's file by throwing that toolbar at me. In fact, I know there have been periods of time where it didn't show up uninvited at all, and then it seems that after I open an attachment (either from Outlook's preview panel or from the open message itself) it becomes the guest-that-wouldn't-leave.
Please, make it stop!

[jscher2000]

Can I explain it? Not really. I've docked it to make it stop appearing at random. Can you disable it completely? Why, yes. See <post#=299216>post 299216</post#> from last Thursday.

[StuartR]

can't find the post now, but I remember someone explaining that if you send a Word document by Outlook email then it adds a document property (with a name starting with an _ character) that causes word to open it with the reviewing toolbar displayed.

Next time you get a document that does this try File > Properties > Custom - look for something with an obvious name starting with _ and delete it to see if the problem goes away

StuartR

[jscher2000]

Woody featured this in an issue of Woody's Office Watch. It can be disabled in the Outlook 2002 options, but if someone else has it enabled, that might cause the bar to pop up. I haven't really tested out all the scenarios. <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15>

[Mesaka]

Very cool. At least I now know why it does that.
I found that there were indeed 5 custom properties: _AdHocReviewCycleID, _EmailSubject, _AuthorEmail, _AuthorEmailDisplayName, and _ReviewingToolsShownOnce. Interestingly, I found that if I just deleted the _ReviewingToolsShownOnce property and then saved and close the file (I never use fast-save), it (the _ReviewingToolsShownOnce property) would reappear the next time I opened the document. But, if I deleted that property AND the _AdHocReviewCycleID property, then those two properties were gone for good and the toolbar didn't come back.
I guess I'll just deal with the hassle of an extra toolbar popping up for now; I feel better knowing why it happens.
And thanks for all your help.