The Shortcut - Microsoft Word

The Shortcut - Microsoft Word is this cool little widget made for the Yahoo! Widget Engine. It helps you get to your Microsoft Word copy super quickly, right from your computer. Even though the Yahoo! Widget Engine project has been discontinued and you can't download these widgets directly from their site anymore, don't worry! You can still grab the platform and the widget over at Softpedia.

Easy Access to Microsoft Word

This tiny gadget fits right in with the software framework without any fuss. It has a small window that shows off the icon for Microsoft Word 2003. Just click that icon, and boom! It opens up your text editor as long as it’s installed on your machine.

Customizing Your Shortcut

If you've installed Word somewhere other than the usual spot, no big deal! You can head to The Shortcut’s configuration panel. It even has a built-in file explorer that lets you find and point to where Word's executable file is located.

More Than Just Word!

What’s really neat is that this widget can recognize the .exe file of any software program, whether it’s installed or portable. So yeah, you can set it up to launch other tools besides just Microsoft Word! And guess what? You don't even need to have Word installed to use this gadget.

Limited Customization Options

One thing to keep in mind is that while you can set up The Shortcut - Microsoft Word however you want, changing out the Word icon for something else isn’t an option. So if you’re looking for deep customization features, there might be some limits here.

Built-in Features

The Yahoo! framework offers some handy options too. You can make the window stay on top of other active panels or let it sit below them. Plus, there's a slider that lets you adjust how transparent it looks! You can also tell it to ignore mouse events so it won't get in your way when you're working.