User interface - Toolbars

Hi folks,

Our previous series of articles have been discussed the MetaTrader Main Menu, we know now how to access the all the functions of the MetaTrader easily from the main menu and its sub-menus.

Today we are going to study another way to access the most of MetaTrader's functions in easier way; from the MetaTrader Toolbars.
 

What are the toolbars?

Toolbars are little windows group similar commands together as icons (Figure 1). The toolbars are usually located under the main menu, but you can move them freely to the place you want.

 

You can customize any of the MetaTrader toolbars by adding and removing icon to a toolbar. You can as well hide and show the toolbars you want.
In MetaTrader there are four toolbars (Standard, Charts, Line Studies and Periodicity) which we are going to study them soon, but first let's learn how to work with the toolbars in general.
 

Moving Toolbars:

At the left of each toolbar you will find a ruled part (Figure 2) which called "move handle".
You use this move handle to move the toolbar to the place you want. just click the move handle of the toolbar you want to move and hold the left mouse key then drag your mouse to the place you want to put the toolbar at and release the left button key (Figure 3).

Figure  2 - Move handle

 

Note: If you dragged the toolbar to one of the edges of MetaTrader you will notice that the toolbar will be aligned and resized to this edge (Figure 4). This called docking. Docking means: rearranging the windows of the program when you drag one of them over another one.

Figure  4 - Docking

Note: Double clicking the "move handle" will undock the toolbar, like the one showed in figure 3. If you double clicked the title (The blue top area) of the undocked toolbar it will be docked again.

Hiding and Showing Toolbars:

You can hide / show any of the four toolbars with one of this methods:

1- From the View menu - Toolbars sub-menu you can uncheck (Figure 5) the toolbar you want to hide. To show the toolbar again go to the same menu and check the toolbar.

Figure  5 - Toolbars sub-menu

2- If you right click any of the toolbars you will get a context menu the same as the menu you've got from View menu (Figure 6).

Figure  6 - Toolbars context menu

3- If you moved the toolbar to undocking place (or undocked it by clicking the "move handle") you can close it by clicking the "x" close button.
 

Customizing toolbars:

Some of commands are more used than others and all the toolbars of MetaTrader are customizable which means you can add/remove the buttons you want for every toolbar.
To customize a toolbar you have to right click it to bring the context menu (Figure 6) then click the Customize command.
This will pop up the Customizing Toolbar window (Figure 7).

Figure  7- Customizing Toolbar Window

As you can see in the figure 7 the Customizing Toolbar window is divided to two lists:

1- The left list is the Available commands list. These are the commands are not shown in the toolbar and which you can choose one of them and click "Insert >" button to add it to the another list (show them in the toolbar) and remove it from the Available list. You can also double click the command you want to move it from this list to the other list.

2- The right list is the Selected commands list. There are the command are already shown in the toolbar and which you can choose one of them and click "< Remove" button to add them to the Available list (hide them from the toolbar) and remove them from the Selected list. You can also double click the command you want to move it from this list to the other list.
 

Note: You can drag any command from one list to the other to show/hide it on the toolbar.
 

The first item in Available list is the separator and it function to group some of command together by separating them with a little vertical line (Figure 8 & 9). You can add as many separators as you want to the toolbar.

Figure 8 - Separator

Figure 9 - Separator

You can also change the order of the selected icons on the toolbar using the "Up" and "Down" buttons. First select the command you want to move it up or down from the Selected list then click Up or Down buttons. Or simple drag it to the position you to place it in the list.
 

If you after this work not happy with your toolbar commands placed on it or the order of commands, there's no problem, you can reset the toolbar to its default setting by pressing the "Reset" button.