3 Ways to Get Classic Menu for Office
Microsoft is well known for making major changes to its products which its customers seemingly didn’t want or ask for, Windows 8 being a recent example of something with many sweeping changes that proved to be controversial. But before that, another big alteration to a product line was with Microsoft Office 2007 and the introduction of the Ribbon user interface. People couldn’t at the time get their heads around the completely different way of showing the most used options which were previously in the form of easy to understand buttons and menus in Office 2003.
Even today, many people still do not get on with the Ribbon interface of Office, even though Office 2010, 2013 and even the new 2016 still use an updated version of the ribbon instead of traditional buttons and menus. While this isn’t a problem to some, others like the familiarity of the old UI and work better when they know where everything is. Sadly Microsoft completely removed any option of having the old menus and buttons interface available in its Office products, from their point of view it’s Ribbon or nothing.
It’s now down to third parties to help revive this functionality and thankfully a few of them have released products that help you do it. Some are free and some aren’t so you need to decide what suits you best, here we show you some of the free options available.
1. RibbonCustomizerRibbonCustomizer is an add-in that works on Office 2007 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Although the product is now discontinued and the website has disappeared, the free version of RibbonCustomizer still works perfectly fine on the latest version of Office 2007. While this isn’t a full blown replacement for the Ribbon UI to bring back the Office 2003 look, it does bring back a tab where you can have the old style menu and buttons made available.
To use RibbonCustomizer, install it and then open Word, Excel or Powerpoint 2007. Click on the View tab in the Ribbon and click the Customize Ribbon drop down. Hover over the Customization Schemes sub menu and select either of the options, this will then place the Classic UI tab at the chosen end of the Ribbon tabs.
When you select the Classic UI tab the Ribbon area will show what looks like the Office 2003 menus and the most common default buttons. While it isn’t a 100% accurate replacement for the previous Office buttons and menus, it is a good approximation that should make users who want a traditional interface feel more at home.
There used to be 2 versions of RibbonCustomizer, Starter and Professional. The free Starter version is obviously more limited in its functions and features, but Professional is no longer available. The original web page for RibbonCustomizer Starter is viewable at the Internet Archive if you wish to see the feature list. When tested it did also appear work fine on Office 2010 and 2013.
2. UBitMenu
Like RibbonCustomizer, UBitMenu is an add-in for Microsoft Office, although this one is four years younger and officially states it supports Office 2007, 2010 and also Office 2013. Being an Office add-in means no files are patched and no executables or services need to be running in the background. The actual way it looks and works in Excel, PowerPoint and Word is almost identical to RibbonCustomizer, adding a new tab to the Ribbon which holds the old style functions.
Usage is pretty much foolproof, all you have to do is download and install UBitMenu (25 different languages are available), then open Word, Excel or Powerpoint. A new tab simply called Menu will be available on the Ribbon where you can access the 2003 style menus and buttons. The tab is again a close approximation which should please those who still prefer the Office 2003 look. UBitMenu is free for personal use but you have to pay if you want to use the add-in for commercial purposes. A separate version is also available especially for Outlook but that isn’t free to use.
3. Office Classic Menu
As you might have guessed by now, the only real way of adding Office 2003 style functions to newer Office versions is by using the Office add-in system. This product is no different and works in the same way as the other programs listed above for Excel, Powerpoint and Word 2007, 2010 and 2013 (including Office 365). It does have a separate setup installer for each version though so make sure you download the correct one. Like UBitMenu, simply download and install Office Classic Menu and a new tab called Classic Menu will appear alongside the other Ribbon tabs.
While the differences between RibbonCustomizer, UBitMenu and Office Classic Menu are tiny in Office 2007 and 2010, Office Classic Menu has a small advantage in Office 2013. That is because both the menus and buttons in the classic tab are a bit more spaced out, the other two add-ins have things more tightly packed into a smaller area making it feel a bit cramped. A separate dedicated 2013 version helps in this case. Office Classic Menu is free for personal use.
Note: All three products above work for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. If you are looking for the classic 2003 style for other Office products like Outlook, Publisher, Access, Onenote etc, you may have to consider paid options. Addintools actually have a rather bewildering array of classic menu for Office products, all of which are shareware. If Word or Excel is all you want, you should try out the free options above first.
You might also like:
5 Free and Portable Microsoft Office Alternatives
Office Repair Tool for 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 Versions
Fix Microsoft Office Word Has Not Been Installed For The Current User Error
Auto Enter Product Key When Installing Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013
Add Extra Buttons to Window Title Bar and Menu [Best Tools]
Since it was noted above about using a virus checker to eliminate one of the products a couple things to keep in mind. Many virus checkers today are ultra-sensitive and flag anything that are perfectly safe such as keystroke hooking. Well Windows has all this built in and sells Detours to allow anyone to do it if you don’t want to just use the OS hooks available to any programmer. A very large majority of software does these types of functions to add features because the software may have no source, is very old or just to create a nice functional tool for end users. Virus checkers do the same thing(hooking) that they’re flagging another software for too. Unless you don’t trust the vendor this is no reason to discard a perfectly good product. Keystroke hooking is extremely common. In this case the product may longer be supported so that’s fine but virus checkers are not absolutes.
This should be updated… in July 2021 a Windows 10 user will find that
(1) RibbonCustomizer stops and declares it requires Microsoft .Net 2.0 support. It has to be added through Settings->Apps & Features->Optional Features->MoreWindowsFeatures , where it will be the first item at the top of the list, scroll up if not visible, check box, searches for required files, before eventually eventually announcing that it must download them from Microsoft, and then installs them. After doing all that RibbonCustomizer stops and declares that Office 2007 must be installed. I don’t know if it can be mollified by adding in a stray registry key for Office14 or something like that somewhere. It seemed too likely to continue to suffer from anachronisms to pursue it any further.
(2) UBitMenu has only one detractor on VirusTotal, but the detailed report from the sandbox of its activity has enough unnecessary activity including system calls, hooking into the keystroke chain at a low level, and network traffic with multiple sites that taken together aren’t easily explained and tend to support the detractor’s opinion. In summary, it may be fine, but its doing things that it doesn’t need to that malicious apps do and I’m not interested in playing Spy vs Spy at the moment.
(3) Office Classic Menu has added Office 2916 and 2019 versions but it is no longer free for personal use. The developer now charges roughly $20 USD for personal use. There is a 30 day free trial. I’m not inclined to try something I wouldn’t pay $20 for.
(4) There are freeware document templates that include menu templates for the classic menus items that sound more promising in the long run than executable add-ins
We are in a microsoft created hell
Randy.
being the author of 4 commercial packages still cant use this ms ribbon offices… what the mess…in the past a wps has been alternative but not any more…they wasted it as well…paying for not going to school is not an issue but what to buy now? mean with classic ui? any advise?
LibreOffice has not implemented ribbon menus (that I know of), and is free open source.
thank you for the help in ridding me of Ribbons … is there a way to make windows 10 look like XP allowing control of all colors and fonts individually. the low contract in win 10 makes it difficult to read the screen. eg the blacks are gray and the background is a lighter gray. thehigh contract is not a basrgain either
Raymond CC … came to see this by accident but happy I did … used to get your regular email blogs, last one came in Friday, March 03, 2017 5:09 AM … is that a thing of the past.
Most importantly I hope you are well and safe during these Covid times.
I started with Word 3.x for DOS and when I reached Office 2003 I stopped as – in my (not so) humble opinion, Office (or at least, Word) never got any better after that point and there were already more functions and complexity than I would ever use in my work. Now in 2020 I am still using Word and Excel 2003 in my business and they work flawlessly. As others here have said, the ribbon was (and remains) an abomination. When my erstwhile employer introduced Office 2010 I spent a year or two struggling to use it but my stress rocketed and productivity plunged. Training failed to help – it was not so much that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but more this old dog just didn’t see the point of using something the made work vastly more difficult after 20+ years of drop-down menus. I resigned and set up my own business and have been a happy and productive self-employed UK dinosaur ever since.
Thumbs up. The new gen kids are used to play with the software instead of working and they don’t mind at all because they don’t know how easy and simple it used to be. And when something like that becomes a standard you cannot evade most of the people just go along with it. Like if you ain’t got options then why bother at all.
Hotkeys, custom Visual Basic add ons, drop down menu entries you know by heart etc etc… all gone for no good reason. This was absolutely unnescessary to change.
Had 2003 until now as well. Nowadays thanks to W10 I had to upgrade because of Outlook not accepting some of the incomming mails. Word and Excel is still present and from 2003. Outlook would work as well but only in compatibility mode which makes it look like an early W 3.11 program. No problem if you don’t mind but after getting used to the 2003 clean XP Classic look I really did not want this (along with the issue not being able to read every message properly).
There is however a Classic Outlook project already for sale (and a for free version if you are okay with the basic functions) which works and looks like the old Outlook Express but in a modern suite with all the actual mechanics. And Openoffice is starting to catch up where Office has left its roots. So IMO in a few years those apps will completely take over the good old classic look and feel that MS has simply dropped. Once they are there I won’t hesitate to get a copy myself and throw money at them :) Office 2003 was the best MS had ever produced.
Office Classic menu is no longer free, it’s now a 30 day trial.
I agree with Don and Ramon. What was MS thinking !!??!! The software must have been written by school leavers who have no experience of the older versions, or an understanding of the importance of continuity in a business. They sell the software based on productivity, whereas they should be promoting it based on the loss of productivity.
They could have continued to add extra functions, in say 2010 over 2003, by expanding the number of drop down menus instead of having to guess which tab to move to for the required functions, but then we have to move to another tab for another function.
Agreed. SW written by children.
I just lost my hard drive and someone loaded Office 2016 onto my laptop.
Do you know if there is a classic menu fix for this.? If not, I’ll be going back to Corell software.
God bless you Brian !!!! “The software must have been written by school leavers who have no experience of the older versions” and rather than bother to learn how it worked, they devised their own as they needed it on the spare of the moment. Of course, all their supervisors wanted was to show the “bosses” that they did something, to make the product look different, thus justifying their existence superficially, rather than actually improving the product. Stop me before I start crying….
I agree Don. I still use Office 2003 because of that very reason. A few years ago, when I job deployed Office 2007, I was like WTF?!?! What was Microsoft thinking?!?!
Microsoft’s ARROGANCE is STAGGERING! They spent 25 years teaching me to use OFFICE using MENUS! Now, we are stuck the a discombobulated MESS of similar, but different functions distributed across all manner of menus. The oh so smart, ignoramuses, who are responsible for this mess, must have NO knowledge or understanding of how a USER INTERFACE is important and a valuable asset, which these BOZOs have trashed, both in appearance and functionality. STUPID!
You should have realized, by now, that Microsoft changes the look of things more to have an excuse to sell millions of versions of a “new” Office suite or operating system, more than to actually provide added functionality. Every time MS comes out with a new OS, it’s a quick $100MM plus to their bank account. And, sometimes…such as when they upgraded Windows 7 (a great OS) to ver 8, the new OS turned out to be a disaster, and quickly needed to be replaced with 8.1. Sad way of doing business!
Thank you very much, Raymond.CC
thank you very much i was looking for it
nice one…
thanks
u are the best!!!
thanks a lot raymond, i was having exactly the same problems with office 07, its new menu style is really confusing
thanks Ray this is very useful for ms office 2007 user.