What is Task Pane?
Task panes are interface elements frequently appearing on the right side of the windows in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. Through task panes, users can access interface controls that can run code to edit documents or emails or display data from a data source. Beginning with Windows XP, Microsoft Office has a dockable dialogue windows feature called a task pane. A user can edit the data contained in a document using this dialogue. A feature of Microsoft Office called the task pane can be found in Office 2002 (Windows XP), Office 2003, and later editions. It makes regularly used features, information, and instructions easily available to consumers.
The task pane has one or two pages, each of which has been divided into portions for convenient viewing. Using a compatible version of Microsoft Office, users can open the task pane by pressing CTRL + F1 on their keyboard or by choosing View, Task Pane, from the menu. The task pane's screen appearance can be changed to view, dock, undock, add pages, and utilize other similar MS Office functions.
Types of Task Pane
A task pane is a versatile windows pane on the right side of an Office application's windows. The global task panes that are present in all Office programs are described in the list that follows:
- Startup task pane - Office programs' default task pane is the Startup task pane.
- New File Task Pane – it permits you to begin a new file in a specific application and offers the option to open recently used files and access several document templates.
- Office Clipboard Task Pane - enables you to see items you have cut and copied to the Office Clipboard.
- Clip Art Task Pane - enables you to browse the Office Clip Gallery and add clip art to documents created with Office applications.
- Search Task Pane - allows you to look for files using any Office application.
- Research Task Pane – This new task windows can use various research and reference services. Many of these references are available online through resources like Microsoft Encarta.
In more detail, let's see how Startup task pan can be enabled or disabled in an Office program. Other task panes do have a similar type of enable or disable methodologies.
For Office programs, the Startup task pane is the default one. When you launch your Office software, it automatically shows up to the right of the document windows. This task pane's starting location can be modified, and you can choose whether or not to prevent it from opening when an Office program does.
To relocate the Startup task windows to a new location, follow these procedures:
- Open the desired Office program.
Here we are taking MS Word as an example Office program. - Drag the task pane's title bar to the desired location by clicking and holding down the mouse button when you restart the Office application and the task pane displays in the new location.
To Disable the Startup task pane from displaying when you launch an Office program, follow these procedures:
- Open the desired Office program (MS Word)
- At the top of the task pane, click the drop-down arrow and choose the close option.
- When you restart the Office application, the Startup task windows does not appear.
In rare circumstances, taking the earlier actions won't disable this feature. Modify the Windows registry if this happens. The necessary methods for removing the task pane feature from the Windows registry are listed below.
- Close all running applications, including all instances of Microsoft Office.
- Select Start.
- Press Run.
- Type regedit into the Run windows and hit Enter.
- Open the following registry key in the Registry Editor.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General
- Find the "DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane" key in the section above. To remove this registry key, select it and press the Delete key.
- Registry Editor should be closed.
After performing the procedures mentioned earlier, Microsoft Word shouldn't open with the Office task pane the next time.
To enable the Startup task pane when you launch an Office program, follow these procedures:
- Click to check the Startup Task Pane box under Show on the View tab, and then click OK.
- When the Office program is restarted, the Startup task windows opens.