Customizing the Toolbox in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Although almost everything within the Toolbox in PowerPoint 2011 works so well, you can still customize it as you want by clicking the Customize Toolbox button located at the upper-right corner of the Toolbox, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Customize Toolbox button

This flips over the Toolbox interface, and displays the Toolbox Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Toolbox Settings dialog box

The Toolbox Settings dialog box is divided into three groups:

1. Close Effect

Click to bring up a pop-up menu and choose from Genie, Scale, or No Effect.

2. When inactive for

Select this check-box and use the slider to determine how long a period of inactivity will pass before the Toolbox displays as collapsed, fade to the amount of fade you specify with the slider, or closes by itself.

3. Palette

Here you can choose the tab for which you want to make changes, only two of the tabs: Reference Tools and Compatibility Report can be chosen from this drop-down list, again you can only make changes for the Reference Tools here, and that is what we explore here. You can choose which tools to display on the Reference Tools tab. The two options within this group are:

Allow online access

Select this check-box to enable Reference Tools to have online access.

Show Panels

Choose from a list of Reference Tools to display. If you don't need to use tools such as the Bilingual Dictionary, you can deselect it here.

Once you have made customizations, click the OK button to get back to the default Toolbox interface.