Turn Off Startup Task Pane

By Neil J. Rubenking

I couldn’t seem to get rid of the Startup task pane (or pane in the neck, as I came to call it) in Microsoft Word 2003 after I upgraded from Office XP. I kept trying the obvious way: select Tools | Options and uncheck the Startup Task Pane box, but it never worked. The box was always unchecked, but the task pane kept appearing.

Here’s how: Launch Regedit from the Start menu’s Run dialog, then browse to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\General.

Look for a DWORD called DoNotDismissFileNewTaskPane. Double-click it and change its value to 0. Now the task pane will not automatically open when you start Word.

It’s not clear why Microsoft would implement a Registry value that would override the checkbox in Word, but you can easily demonstrate that it’s true. If your installation of Word always displays the task pane at startup, regardless of the Options setting, this value may be the culprit. For those running Office 2002/XP, the fix is exactly the same, but with 10.0 replacing 11.0 in the Registry key.