# Showing and Hiding Menu Items and Toolbar Buttons

You can choose to hide menu items and toolbar buttons and then show them again.

## Hiding a Menu Item or Toolbar Button

To hide a menu item or toolbar button:

1. Switch to the perspective that you want to configure.
2. Select Window > Perspective > Customize Perspective....
3. Open the Tool Bar Visibility or Menu Visibility tab.
4. Find the item you want to hide. You can do this two ways:
   - Expand the menu or toolbar hierarchy to find the item you want to hide.
   - Click the Filter by action set check box to see a list of command groups which contribute items, and choose the command group the item you wish to hide. Then navigate to the item in the hierarchy in the Structure tree.
5. Hover over the item to get additional information:
   - a description of what the item does
   - the name of the command group which contributes the item (click the link in this item to switch to the Action Set Availability tab with the appropriate command group selected).
   - any key bindings associated with the command the item performs (click the link in this item to open the Keys page of the Preferences dialog with the command selected, if possible).
   - if the item is dynamic, a preview of its current appearance (dynamic items are listed as [Dynamic]).
6. Uncheck the check box next to the item. Uncheck a menu to hide all its children.
7. Click OK to cause the changes to take effect.

Using the tooltip which appears over items, you can navigate to the Action Set Availability tab and make the entire command group unavailable if you wish to remove all menu items, toolbar buttons and keybindings of all commands contributed by the command group.

## Showing a Menu Item or Toolbar Button

To show a menu item or toolbar button, you can follow the same instructions as hiding one, except check the check box instead of unchecking it.

If an item you want to make visible is grayed out, this is because the command group which contributes it is not available. You need to make it available before you can show or hide items it contributes. You can do this by hovering over the item, and clicking the command group link in the tooltip which appears.

### Related Concepts

Perspectives

### Related Tasks

Changing where perspectives open
Specifying the default perspective
Saving a user defined perspective