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I was wondering if it was possible to change certain aspects of the Windows Basic theme for Windows 7, particularly because a number of my machines cannot or will not run aero. Possibly most importantly, I was wondering if it were possible to change to color of the taskbar or 'superbar', preferably to something a bit darker (though I would imagine it it *can* be changed, it can be changed to any color). Also, do normal visual styles work with Windows 7, such as those custom themes that can be used with XP or Vista? And will they work without any of the fancy aero effects? Thanks

That will hide the ribbon, but it is still accessible. The macros I posted above completely remove the ribbon from Excel, and I think the other one is for Onenote. They remove everything; Office Button, Tabs, Ribbons, and the Quick Launch Toolbar (though that can be brought back through using RibbonX from what I've read). You can get an idea for what it does by reducing the height of a document window until the ribbon vanishes. In Excel the macro does the exact same thing but just makes it work with a larger window. I was hoping that there is an equivalent for Word, for I find it strange that the Office Team wouldn't have standardized this sort of thing.

I've been trying to completely hide the Ribbon interface in Office 2007, and I've made some progress through using VBA macros. I know the Excel Ribbon can be hid with the following VBA code: Sub HideRibbon() Application.ExecuteExcel4Macro "SHOW.TOOLBAR(""Ribbon"",False)" End Sub And the following works with another program (I forget which): Sub HideRibbon() DoCmd.ShowToolbar "Ribbon", acToolbarNo End Sub But is there any equivalent to hide the Ribbon in Word? Also, anyone know if its possible to show the Quick Launch Toolbar while hiding the ribbon?

Yes, that is another way to do it, but the Quick Access Toolbar's settings aren't integrated into the Normal.dotm template which makes it a huge bother to deploy a custom QAT across a network. And I probably shouldn't say this, but if my users couldn't find the buttons under the Office Button, they might not find them in the Quick Access Toolbar either. So really, a custom Ribbon tab was all I could come up with, and thankfully it's considerably reduced some very simple problems users have been having.

I've never understood why Microsoft decided to go with the Office Button in 2007. Sure, it looks nice, but from my own experience after transitioning all the machines in my workplace to Office 2007 this year its been a nightmare having to demonstrate to users how to do such simple things as 'save' and 'print' the document. Surely keeping the old 'file' label couldn't have been too bad an idea? And why not even add it into the ribbon, and finish the transition to a better UI altogether? Well, I decided to trial this idea for myself, and adjusted the 'Normal.dotx' file to one I'd configured to have a new 'file' tab with all the options included in the drop-down menu, and I have to say, practically everyone has found it much easier to navigate. Consider the current menu: And compare it to a Ribbon tab with all of that menu's contents: The tab makes commands easier to find for those who are used to the old menu system, and even those people who have adapted to the Ribbon find it more uniform and identifiable. Additionally, and this is just my opinion, it finishes the overhaul of the old drop-down interface with the new and better contextual Ribbon interface. Surely the gurus at Microsoft would have thought of this though? But apparently not. I guess I can only hope that they will read this post and consider it for Office 14. So what are the thoughts of Office power-users such as yourselves on this whole matter? Does the Office Orb work for you? Or would you prefer an additional Ribbon tab?

Yes, you could conceivably create a folder structure as the "start menu" used to be, and then add that folder as a toolbar to the superbar (I've done this, just to see that it can be done). It's not quite the same, but it does work.That's not a half bad idea. Is there any way to remove the start button like you can in XP and prior through a registry hack or whatnot? Thanks,

Ah well. I suppose I can move the quick launch bar and customise that for what I want, but it is a less elegant solution. I hope Microsoft allows resizable ribbon bars (at least custom ones) in the next version of office. All the same, thanks for the quick reply.

Thanks for the tutorial. I've a few questions, however, if anyone can help. I use Word for different purposes on my different machines, and when I am typing something lengthy I generally like to just get the text down before messing around with any complex formatting. For that reason, I've made some customised toolbars in Office 2003, which I've been using up until now. After reading this tutorial I decided to try to convert some of these into the ribbon, but upon making my first one I have encountered a problem. The ribbon is far too high, and with the few commands I inserted into the groups I had thought that the ribbon would be shrunk in order to show them in the best way possible. Instead it appears to show three rows of buttons, when it could put them all horizontally on one. Is there anything that can be added into the XML data to force the ribbon to only use one row? Too much wasted space! From what I've seen of the ribbon interface, I've come to like it somewhat, but if I can't clean it up and remove the many distracting formatting buttons I may have to go back to 2003, which I really don't want to have to do.

The title says it all! I'm looking for a way to completely remove the right-hand pane from the Windows 7 start menu (Though I'd be willing to guess that any solution for Vista might also work). My reasons for doing this are that I have completely removed all the text from the pane, yet it now just shows an empty space with the user picture at the top and the shutdown button at the bottom. This is for a small netbook which has limited screen real estate, hence my desire to remove a seemingly unnecessary item. Is there a way to do this, via registry hack or anything like that? Thanks, Note: Image was taken from wikipedia and quickly edited. It's not my actual system.