How in the Tech

Trim the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 2, 2008 ⋅ Tags: Office

There’s a quote out there from one of the Project Managers on the Office team that revealed a troubling trend with one of Microsoft’s core cash cows. Of the top ten most requested features for future Office releases, a vast majority were already available. Over the last eleven iterations, features and options had become buried under a myriad of drop downs, dialog boxes, etc. At the expense of a major user interface overhaul, Office 12 (2007) set out to right the ship via the controversial ribbon.

The radical departure from the traditional Office look and feel took many people by surprise. It wasn’t long before the complaints rolled regarding the ribbon interface. The ribbon wasted a lot of screen real estate, especially troublesome for laptop users or others stuck with a low screen resolution. Personally, I have a love hate relationship with it as well. As I’m not a huge office power user, I do appreciate the ease of access to features I could never find otherwise – but damn if that doesn’t come at an expense. Surprisingly to me, there is an extremely easy fix to allow for the best of both worlds.

In the desired Office application, simply double click any of the tab headers on the ribbon to collapse the whole thing. You’ll be left with just the headers, somewhat similarly to the old menu style. When clicked upon, the ribbon interface will return with the expected options. However, after selecting the appropriate option the ribbon will collapse once again. Perfect!