Loading ...Classic Office 2003 menus and toolbars for Office 2007
By Michael Pietroforte | 3 Comments | Permalink | Trackback | Previous | NextDo you get stomach ache whenever you think about the complaints you will hear from your colleagues after upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007? I think the new Office user interface is really great! But I am sure you also have these people in your organization who hate any kind of change. And this change is really big! There are two Office add-ins that might be of help to your stomach problem. One is Classic Menu for Office 2007 and the other goes for the name “Toolbar Toggle“.
Both tools are quite similar. They allow you to work with Office 2007 using the menus and toolbars of Office 2003. However, they don’t remove the new interface completely. They just add the Office 2003 user interface. Toolbar Toogle Lite and Classic Menu for Office 2007 add another tab with the new UI.
The standard version of Toolbar Toggle displays the old interface below the new one which occupies more space as with the tab solution. But you can fade out the Office 2007 toolbar with Ctrl+F1 thereby enlarging the writing area. The main difference between Classic Menu and Toggle Toolbar is that the latter doesn’t work with Access. Both tools support Powerpoint, Excel and Word. If you don’t work with an English Office 2007, you might prefer Classic Menu because it supports French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese.
Your users will still be faced with a new interface with both solutions. So you probably will get complaints from some users after deploying Office 2007, anyway. However, it gives them the chance to check out Office 2007 in a free minute. You might also consider installing it on your own PC. This way, you are able to help users if they have questions about Office 2003.
A single user license for Toolbar Toggle costs $19.95. You can get Classing Menu for Office 2007 for $29.95. Both tools have special volume licensing prices. Classic Menu offers versions for single Office products. If you think that this is too expensive, you might have a look at Microsoft’s interactive command reference guide for Office 2007. It also helps Office users to become used to the new user interface.
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[...] 4sysops has an interested article for those using Office 2007 but wishing they had the old office toolbars: [...]
Free addins old classic menu in office-2007 from http://in.geocities.com/shahshaileshs/menuaddins
For me the ribbon has been a super big productivity loss. I find myself clicking numerous times trying to determine where MS has hidden a command. Even if I know where the command is located it is still at least two clicks away whereas when I customized my office 2003 toolbar it was one click away. If I forget where the ribbon command is located the number of clicks seem to go on for ever. I find myself very often using the help file to find the command I’m looking for. It would have been much better if MS provided the option for the user to select either the ribbon or the classic menu. My poll of users reflects that 2 out of a 100 like the new ribbon, the 98 prefer the old toolbars.