Mac Forum / Applications / Word / May 2008

Thanks for all the advice, with which (plus some other online info and experimenting) I was able to muddle through and install the ToolsCalculate command in my Word menu bar (under Tools) and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it. I chose Command+Option+=, which is what I'm used to using from Word 98 (and maybe one earlier version). I believe Command+= was what might have been used in Word 5.1, but that key combination was already taken (by superscript or subscript, I think).

I don't know why Microsoft doesn't just include this useful, easy tool in the Tools menu that one starts out with, rather than having it entirely hidden and also not documented, at least not in the anemic Help that now comes with Word. Actually, I'd rather have the old-fashioned hard-copy manual(s), voluminous though they were. At least there one could see what was possible and pick and choose what to read and use. Actually, though I really can't recall clearly, I might have picked up the tip about the ToolsCalculate feature back in a non-Microsoft publication about whatever version of Word.

I'll try to reconstruct here what I did, in case someone else can benefit. The ToolsCalculate FAQ that Daiya mentioned above was helpful, though incomplete for my purposes. But it gave also considerable info other than installation directions. One problem with it is that these articles/FAQs are undated, and this one seemed pretty old. They should be dated.
<http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/ToolsCalculate.htm>

1. On the View menu, click on Customize Toolbars and Menus. The screen opens with the Toolbars and Menus button/tab near the top selected. I wasn't sure what to do, if anything, with that screen, so clicked on the other button/tab option at the top: Commands.

2. The Commands screen opens with List All Commands selected in the left-hand column (Categories). This lists all commands possible on Word 2008, whether or not they're already in a menu or toolbard or "activated." Stick with this selection.

3. In the right-hand column of commands, scroll down to the ToolsCalculate command and select and drag it to where you want to add it (to Tools in the menu bar rather than the toolbar is what I did). This is a kind of cumbersome/imprecise process (with some sort of temporary, secondary toolbar appearing, which confuses things), and I had to make repeated attempts before concluding I'd finally gotten my add-on where I wanted it.

4. I clicked OK (which evidently confirms the addition and also saves the change to the Normal template (or whatever it's called). It might have been possible then, or earlier, to set up my desired shortcut key combination, but I got out of the customizing window(s) then and went back to Word to see what had had happened, in the end making all these a separated two-stage process. Indeed, I found ToolsCalculate, dimmed, where I'd put it in the Tools menu.

5. I first thought that the dimmed state meant that I'd done something wrong--put the command there but somehow it wasn't active. However, I later learned that ToolsCalculate shows as a clickable choice only when one is working in a Word document and has selected (by dragging over it with the Option key down) a column of numbers to be added (or subtracted or whatever). I tested out some addition, and the calculation tool worked fine.

6. To add a keyboard shortcut for ToolsCalculate, go back to the View menu and again select Customize Toolbars and Menus, then the Commands tab/button. On the commands screen, go directly to the Keyboard button at the bottom. On the Customize Keyboard screen that comes up, the All Commands option is (stupidly) not listed first in the left-hand list, as was the case earlier; it's near the bottom. Select it, because if you choose the Tools option, the ToolsCalculate command won't appear in the Tools list of commands on the right, despite the fact that it was just added to the Tools menu.

7. Select ToolsCalculate from the commands list and t