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?

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?

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.

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.