Excel 2007 for prior users (Hate the Ribbon?)

Frustrated with the Ribbon bar in MS Office?  Here are several solutions.

 

 

As we all found out the hard way, Microsoft completely redesigned the user interface in Office 2007. For some reason, they felt it necessary to do away with the tried and true and standard and universally understood user interface elements such as menu bars. In their place, are what they now call "ribbon bars". They don't even give you the option of turning on the old menu bars. I've been using Office 2007 for a few months now and I'm still struggling. I'm not seeing any benefit to this new UI at all. Don't misunderstand... I'm all for constant improvement and have been accused, on multiple occasions of pushing the envelope too far... heck, constant improvement is nearly a religion of mine, but Microsoft has gone not just a few steps further outside the envelope than I have, but they've ripped it to shreds. At the very least, they should have provided a way for us that already knew our way around the software a way to turn it back on.

And, before you say that the old keystrokes work, they do NOT. One of many examples that don't work: Alt+T would open the Tools menu. There IS NO tools menu now!!! Ugh! Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes! I did find a nice piece of work that someone put together for us that would actually like to get some work done (albeit, very slowly now). This document is organized by the old menu bar interface and shows you where each old menu command's capabilities can be found on the new unicorn and raindbows, phisher-price user interface.

http://transition.gmu.edu/crosswalk/Excel%202007%20Crosswalk.pdf

[Update 2011-08-31]
An even better solution:  UbiMenu, gives you a custom tab that has the old menus and button bar!

 

An even BETTER solution:  LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice)

 

LibreOffice is a replacement for MicrosoftOffice.  It’s a FREE office (source code included, if you want it) that completely replaces Microsoft Office.  You can install it on as many computers as you like.  It’s available for Windows, Mac, & Linux.

 

LibreOffice is a spinoff from OpenOffice.  OpenOffice was created by Sun and provided a completely free Office Suite that was compatible with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc….  Unfortunately, Oracle bought Sun and now owns OpenOffice and few people trust Oracle.  As a matter of fact, they trust them so little that many of the OpenOffice developers spun off their own branch copy, now called “LibreOffice”.  All future development is now continuing with LibreOffice.  If you have OpenOffice, dump it and install LibreOffice (it’s built from the same source code as OpenOffice, so you’re not losing anything at all, but gaining everything).

 

Hope this helps relieve some of your frustrations.