Word 2010 Custom Toolbar

In Word 2000/2003 creating a custom toolbar was pretty straightforward. You would create a default.dot template and point your Word startup location to the default.dot template and your custom toolbars would appear when you launched Word. This default.dot template would be separate from your normal.dot template and you could modify each template separately from each other. The default.dot template would be a shared template on a network share and shared by all users on you network.

Now in Word 2010, I'm struggling to differentiate between how the normal.dotm & a custom default.dotm template will work together - like it did in 2003. For example, If I add a new custom tab to default.dotm, this custom tab becomes available in normal.dotm (and any other word documents that I create) so there is no differentiation between the two templates. So If I modify, default.dotm, normal.dotm also gets modified (or specifically, the ribbon does)!

So how does Word specify when a template can be used as a custom toolbar and nothing else - that is then pulled into the add-in tab?

And is it possible to have this custom toolbar added next to the Home tab for example and with a different name?

Apologies if my explanation is a little confusing but Word 2010 really is!

Not sure if I'm answering your question exactly as asked

I have CustomUI XML in a DOTM file that is saved in Word's StartUp folder:

C:\Users\Me\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

The custom tab from the DOTM is always there

Paul

And the DOTM if you want to play around with it

Just remove the .zip part and save it to your Word Startup folder

Paul

I just want to say thanks for sharing this zip file very useful for me.

I have done all this and get no errors when I start Word. My macros show in View Macros but the custom tab does not show in the ribbon. Not sure what to look for or try?
Dave