Classic Menu UI in Office 2007

So my 65 year old neighbor called me yesterday because he was frustrated with the Office 2007 Ribbon on his brand new machine...

After googling around, I found a great add-in for Office 2007 by Patrick Schmid called the RibbonCustomizer. It comes in two versions - the free Starter Edition and the Professional edition. Both versions, in addition to customizing the Ribbon, give you a "Classic UI" tab which emulate the Office 2003 menus and toolbars.

As you can see from the screen captures, it does not replace the Ribbon UI but adds onto it, which, IMHO, lets the user work with a familiar UI and allows them to slowly transition into the new UI.

For a core product like the Office Suite, Microsoft should have provided this ability by default.

My neighbor couldn't be happier...

14 Comments

  • Wow - I thought we have to live with the new ribbon-thing. This add-in is quite impressive, thanks for the hint.

  • This is GREAT! Makes office products so much easier to use!

  • Or you could just use OpenOffice, which doesn't have this poor UI and is free.

  • What on earth is happening in MS usability labs? Just goes to show that research is only a way of post-rationalizing what you want to do anyways. I've been using office 2007 since it came out and I still spend wasted hours trying to figure out where to find the right button. I think this is what happens when you try too hard to be like Apple. Thanks for this addon advice.

  • A UI upgrade was overdue considering the classic menu has been around for almost 20 years. Menus grew out of control and then task bars were added and made it complicated to use or discover new features. Change is good but having ability to go back to classic helps the transition.

  • The New Ribbon is really annoying, both with the extra space usage and the scattering of the options.

    Personally I turn off all the toolbars except the emnu and basic formatting and use shortcuts for everything else.

    Even though you can hide the Ribbon you cannot really get a menu back properly.

    I understand them trying to add a new element to the system, but the fact you cannot turn it off or revert it to a normal menu is about the biggest screw-up MS has made in ages.

    If they do this to Visual Studio I will begin programming in Java and abandon them entirely.

  • My employer has forced us to use Office 2007. Productivity has fallen significantly, even though we don't use it all that much. The REAL downside is our paranoid IT people have the machines so locked down, we can't even install this add on and they refuse to install it for us.

    Microsoft SUCKS! I'll be using Open Office in the future.....

  • Office 07 (Access 07) is useless. The menu should be able to emulate any 03.

    We are breading a generation of illiterate people using pictures!

  • I'm so frustrated about those limitations. Is it possible to do something more capital? To say, replace or rewrite a DLL library or reset secret value in system registry in order to get rid from this ribbon?

  • "We are breading a generation of illiterate people using pictures!"

    Oh the IRONY..
    Can I have some bread too?

  • They don't have actual usability experts at Microsoft. They are pinheaded Marketing Department graduates, reverse-justifying any conceivable stupidity that development managers can come up with. The development managers of course are not developers, they also are Business School morons. If you think the Ribbon Bar is bad, just wait for what they come up with next - it's bound to be even worse.

    The problem with open source is that they, too, don't have actual usability experts. But at least they don't have marketing bimbos masquerading as usability experts.


  • The new UI is a pain. Give me a logical menu structure any day over this Mac-wannabe ribbon.

  • Is it just me or are people just completely resistant to change? I've been using Office 2007 for ages now and now I'm used to the new UI, I find it far easier to do almost any task. The only gripe I had was the 'orb' instead of a 'file' menu but this is sorted in Office 2010, which looks to be a fantastic product. And just to point out, I am an open source fan who likes Open office, but jesus this is 2010, I want an intuitive interface not an archaic one!

  • I love it Raj - thanks!

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