Change the ribbon in MS Office with classic menus

[spiros]

Change the ribbon in MS Office with classic menus

There is a number of add-ins that can perform this all-too-useful transformation and much more. The dreaded ribbon was introduced with Office 2007, much to the discomfort of Office users.

— Classic Menus and Toolbars in Microsoft Office 2010 and 2013
— RibbonCustomize (add-in for Microsoft® Access™, Excel®, Outlook®, PowerPoint® and Word 2007)
— ToolbarToggle (Menus and Toolbars for Microsoft Office 2010 and Office 2007)
— UBitMenu (Menus and Toolbars for Microsoft Office 2010 and Office 2007 - free for private use)





What happened to all the menus and toolbars in Microsoft Office?

Sorry for the lengthy explanation but you may be interested by this. Microsoft replaced the menus and toolbars with a new feature called the "Ribbon". But contrary to what you may think, Microsoft did not create the Ribbon for customers to be more productive - they created the Ribbon to remain competitive at the cost of your productivity. There are a lot of reasons they felt they benefited but if you are curious, here are the main reasons.

First, they were concerned about the free Office-like apps being offered by Google and such. Their fear was that many customers might switch to these free applications without realizing they all the features Microsoft Office offered and they would be giving up. So the Ribbon acts as an "advertising banner" for Microsoft Office's features.

Second, the toolbars and menus can not be copyrighted since they are in the public domain. Why is this important to Microsoft? Well, by designing a whole new interface called the "Ribbon" which could be copyrighted, Microsoft visually distinguishes itself from the competition since competing applications can not use the new Ribbon interface without paying a hefty license fee.

Third, the new Ribbon user interface was far easier to recreate in their online version of Office versus trying to imitate menus and toolbars within an internet browser program.
http://www.toolbartoggle.com/FAQ/FAQ