Show, hide, and customize the toolbar in Windows Mail

The Windows Mail toolbar is a convenient repository of the most commonly used commands, all accessible just click away. What you may not know is that the toolbar can be heavily customized to fit your needs: aside from being able to show it or hide it altogether, you can choose to display text below the icons, on the right, or not at all; add or remove commands (buttons / icons); and even change the size of the button icons on the toolbar. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to customize the Windows Mail toolbar.

Change the size of the icons on the Windows Mail toolbar

• Right click anywhere on the toolbar, and choose "Customize"
• The Customize Toolbar dialog will open
• Under the "Icon Options" dropdown menu, choose either "Large Icons" or "Small Icons"
• As soon as you pick one or the other, Windows Mail updates the toolbar appearance in real time to allow you to preview the change.
• Once you're satisfied with the dimension of the icons, click "Close" to return to your emails.

Show or hide text labels on the toolbar

After a while, you will become so familiar with each of the buttons on the toolbar that just looking at the icon will remind you what a given button does. Windows Mail gives you nonetheless three separate options when it comes to text labels on the toolbar:

• Right click on the toolbar and choose "Customize"
• Click on the "Text Options" drop down menu
• The first option, "Selective text on right", instructs Windows Mail to only display text on the right side of some of the toolbar icons; visually this is quite an attractive choice, but the extra text means that you'll be able to see less icons on the toolbar.
• The second choice is "Show text labels" - in this case, Windows Mail will display the name of each command under the corresponding toolbar button; if you are using small icons, this means that you will be able to see less commands than if no text was shown - but still many more icons then if you have chosen the previous option.
• The final option is "No text labels": without any text labels displayed on the right or below buttons, you can show quite a few buttons on the toolbar, even when using large icons. Once you're familiar with the Windows Mail toolbar iconography, this may become your preferred setting.
• Here too, Windows Mail gives you a live preview of the changes as you modify your settings; click on the "Close" button to return to your emails.

Add or remove commands from the Windows Mail toolbar

You can show or hide icons from the toolbar, and include custom separators between each button:

• Right-click on anywhere on the toolbar, and choose "Customize"
• On the left ("Available toolbar buttons") are all the commands that are currently available and not yet on the toolbar; on the right ("Current toolbar buttons") are displayed all the buttons and commands that are currently showing on the toolbar.
• To add a new command (button / icon) to the windows mail toolbar, just select it on the left, and click the "Add" button. The new command will be added at the corresponding position; to display that particular icon more to the left or more to the right, select it in the right pane, and click on the "Move Up" or "Move Down" button.
• To remove (or hide) a button from the toolbar, select it on the right and click on the "Remove" button - Windows Mail moves the command back to the left.
• A special kind of item you can add or remove from the toolbar at will is the "Separator" - just add it and reposition it to create a bit of space and the vertical separator on the Windows Mail toolbar, a vertical line between two buttons on the toolbar.
• Click "Close" once you are done.

This has covered all the customization options windows mail offers and comes to configuring the toolbar itself; now comes the time to turn the toolbar On or Off.

Show or hide the toolbar in Windows Mail

Finally, here is how you can show or hide the toolbar altogether:

• Click on the View menu, and choose "Layout"
• Windows mail will open the Window Layout Properties dialog
• To show the toolbar, check of the "Toolbar" checkbox
• To hide the toolbar, uncheck the "Toolbar" checkbox
• Click OK to return to Windows Mail