Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Member_2_1348041
Member_2_1348041Flag for Ireland

asked on

Setting the size of MS Office "Save As" dialogs

Hello Experts,

As part of the software that I am writing, we add a new place to the Microsoft Office "Save As" dialogs. This can be done by adding a new key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Places in the registry. All you need to do is add a new place in the sub key UserDefinedPlaces. So far so good.

However, when the user is, say, in a Word document, and they click "Save As", the Save As dialog comes up, and our new User Defined Place is listed at the bottom, and the Save As dialog is just a little too small, so that our User Defined Place is hidden just out of view in the Toolbar on the left.

All it takes to fix this is to make the Save As dialog a tiny bit bigger.

Now, we observed that if you do this, and you go in the next time, it has kept the display size settings. It must therefore store that information somewhere. And if it stores it somewhere, it may be able to change the information before the Save As dialog is displayed the next time, thus ensuring that even the first time the Save As dialog is displayed with our wonderful New Place in it, it will be big enough to ensure that our New Place is visible.

My question is: where is the information stored (I would imagine it's in the Registry somewhere?) and what format is it in?

I have a suspicion it may be in the "Data" value for the Save As "View" registry setting:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Microsoft Office Word\Settings\Save As\View

But that is a binary value and I don't know what it represents and how it is represented.

Cheers

Pino
place01.png
place02.png
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Ryan Chong
Ryan Chong
Flag of Singapore image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Member_2_1348041

ASKER

No. That doesn't appear to work.
Strange, it works for me on my XP pro laptop, do you have many Office versions installed on your machine?

maybe you can try find around in Registry for folders like:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Common\Open Finder

see whether changes of that did make difference?
No. I have, however, found intersting information here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Microsoft Office Word\Settings\Save As

there are two binary values there, PositionInfo-Monitor1 and PositionInfo-Monitor2

I have two monitors. Maybe that has something to do with it?
Hi,

sorry, no idea of that... I don't see these 2 binary values (PositionInfo-Monitor1 and PositionInfo-Monitor2) on my laptop, and I only could see if I changed the binary values under:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Common\Open Finder

("Height", "Width", "CenterX", "CenterY")

which will affects the Size and Position of dialog pops up. Other than that, I can't find any other places in Registry which look suspicious controlling the dialog size and its position.
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
I'd prefer to have total control, rather than hand it over to 3rd party software ...
I'd try some of them and see what registry changes they make.  Or monitor them on install to see where in the registry they are going.  There are apps out there that do that.
**sob**