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Internet Explorer 7 Toolbar - Menu Bar - Status Bar

Enable or Disable Customizing the Toolbar / Command Bar

SUMMARY: Need to prevent others from modifying your Internet Explorer 7 toolbar? Or what if you need to customize it and cannot do so?

The following tip involves modifying the Windows Registry and could cause problems with your machine. Standard disclaimers apply.

When you right-click on the Command Bar in Internet Explorer 7, are you prevented from customizing the command bar / toolbar as shown in the below image?

Screenshot of Internet Explorer 7 with Command Bar customization disabled.

Or, what if you share your computer with others and want to prevent the command bar / toolbar from being changed?

To toggle the customization ability of the Internet Explorer 7 command bar / toolbar, you must be logged on your machine as an Administrator and perform the following registry edit.

If your machine is managed by a system administrator with policies enabled, you may not be able to make this change.

1. Open "regedit.exe" from the "Start" button (Windows XP users should choose choose "Start" - "Run", then run the registry editor).

2. Navigate to the following key: My Computer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

3. To enable toolbar / command bar customization:

You should see a key "NoToolbarCustomize" with a value of 1. Either delete the key or change its value to 0.

To disable toolbar / command bar customization:

Create a new DWORD value with the name "NoToolbarCustomize". Give this a value of 1.

4. Restart Internet Explorer 7. Your changes should take effect.

Or, the following links are to files that will modify your Windows Registry. Right-click the desired file and save it to disk, then double-click the file and confirm importing the registry settings when prompted. After the registry settings are imported, you will need to restart Internet Explorer 7.