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What If
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Intuit QuickBooks - Colorized Top Icon Bar for QuickBooks 2014
Colorized Top Icon Bar for QuickBooks 2014
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Intuit QuickBooks - Desktop Personal Preferences (used to colorize QuickBooks 2014)
Desktop Personal Preferences tab
A reader writes: I haven’t been using QuickBooks for the past several years, but when I got the newest edition, it looked so very different than I remember it. For one thing there is this really dark icon bar down the left side which takes up a lot of the screen since I don't have a wide-view monitor. I remember we use to have an icon bar across the top that you could customize with different color icons for your own needs. Is there any way to get the ‘old icon bar’ back?
You are in luck; during 2013 Intuit changed the look of QuickBooks. Not only did they introduce the left hand 'Navigation Bar' that year, but they also turned the product 'black-n-white' for the most part. In response to these changes Intuit received a multitude of complaints and so they made some limited changes before 2013 ended, but they also made several more changes in the 2014 product changing from the ‘black’ to the ‘blue-black’ you mentioned, which believe me is quite an improvement.
You do have an option concerning that left hand Navigation Bar. On the menu bar, select View >Top Icon Bar. You can also select the option to change the top ‘blue-black’ Icon bar to one that more closely resembles the older versions of QuickBooks with a light background and various colors of icons. From the menu bar, select Edit > Preferences > Desktop View > My Preferences tab. Place a check-mark next to Switch To Colored Icons/Light Background on the Top Icon Bar. See Figure 2.
Intuit also gave you the ability to select some ‘colorization’ to help differentiate files if you use more than one, or simply if you would prefer a ‘pink’ title bar in lieu of the ‘blue-black’ standard. You can change the file’s color scheme by choosing a color from the Company File Color Scheme drop-down list found in the same preference as above. See Figure 3.
By changing to the top icon bar, colorizing it, and adding a little color to your QuickBooks file scheme, you may just find that the new software is as delightful to work inside as the older version you had fond memories of.