Excel Ribbon

[hrlngrv]

It's possible to back fill the old menu into the QAT, at least in Excel 2010. In Excel 2007 and later old VBA code which adds anything to the worksheet menu now adds those items to the Add-In tab. Excel 2010 provides an item for the QAT named Menu Commands which provides a drop-down menu containing all added menu items also shown in the Add-In tab. Put this in the QAT, then use a macro to add a new popup to CommandBars(1) and add all of the previous items in CommandBars(1) to this new popup menu. Voila, you have Excel's 'classic' menu in the QAT.

 

[hrlngrv]

Picky: 20 years ago was early 1992, and Quattro Pro was only 2 years old then. QP came out shortly after Lotus won their look-and-feel lawsuit against Mosaic and PSI (I had been a VP-Planner user along with 1-2-3 at work).

I can understand the ribbon as a reconceived menu. MSFT reorganized Excel's menu between Excel 4 and Excel 5. Necessary in part due to VBA newly included in Excel 5. However, MSFT provided an Excel 4 menu as an option in Excel 5. I don't recall whether that went away in Excel 97 or 2000.

What I can't accept is that the ribbon is a useful replacement for toolbars, which could be docked on any side of Excel's application window or floating on top of document windows. In addition to placement flexibility, toolbars were much easier to program, and could be programmed using VBA. I have the impression Office 2007 and Vista were rushed to market as a lesser evil than waiting another year to get them right. Ditto more strongly Excel 2008, the Mac version so rushed to market MSFT had to drop VBA support only to bring it back in Excel 2011.

I'm glad I went straight from Excel 2003 to 2010. I couldn't have stomached Excel 2007. Excel 2010 still has a ribbon, but at least it can be customized. Not that I've done so. I've heavily customized my QAT, and haven't used the ribbon for months. If there were only some way to keep the QAT but dump the ribbon (not just minimize it).

 

[hrlngrv]

It no longer does on many newer laptops. FWIW, [Shift]+[F10] does the same thing.

 

[xenou]

I've heavily customized my QAT, and haven't used the ribbon for months. If there were only some way to keep the QAT but dump the ribbon (not just minimize it).

Don't you sometimes need the menus? For instance, if designing a new chart, or inserting a new pivot table - things you don't do frequently but when you do require some extra formatting. Though I suppose if you really want to you can get to most things from right click menus.

 

[xenou]

Surprised no one has yet mentioned the evil Cell styles gallery taking up so much real estate on the home tab. If you create an addin with your ribbon customization and install it you can edit the ribbon to remove this (even for XL2007). I guess there is a momentary flicker as 20% of the ribbon disappears (though I don't really notice it anymore now that I'm used to it - and I have about 7 addins that install when I start Excel anyway so I'm pretty used to a slight pause at that point).

Here's a ready made addin to replace the Excel 2007 home tab (without the cell styles gallery):
<a href="http://northernocean.net/etc/mrexcel/20120202_RX.zip">RX.xlam</a>
sha256sum: 0dc3d67faeb008cf746b19338b0b549976aa929453ac04b400ec9dfe603936c6
(see the links above for the how-to).

(Note re last post I did succeed in removing all tabs from the ribbon leaving only the QAT but I don't really see the point - the small border remains (it has the minimize, maximize buttons in it and the Excel help Question Mark). It just doesn't have any tab names showing, so you don't gain much, not even real estate ... that's with 2007. It looks the same as startFromScratch = "true", except that it leaves you with the QAT. Dunno about 2010.

Note again:
Just noticed a few links on cell styles (the real thing, not the canned version) so I thought I'd drop them in:
http://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?146
http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2011/02/22/question-on-your-modeling-practices…/

 

[hrlngrv]

I don't use many pivot tables, and when I do I stick to default formatting. Everything I need to change is available from the right-click menu.

As for charts, I use a few custom templates with all options in the templates to be left in or deleted. Trend lines are the only thing I'd need to add from time to time, but I haven't added any for a while.

Yes, there are some things only available from the ribbon, and when I need them, I have to use the ribbon. So more accurate to say I've reduced my ribbon use to only those times when there's no alternative.

 

[xenou]

Yes, there are some things only available from the ribbon, and when I need them, I have to use the ribbon. So more accurate to say I've reduced my ribbon use to only those times when there's no alternative.

Makes sense. In future just say: computer: add trendline

 

[wigi]

Try the code workaround.

With Selection
.Copy
.PasteSpecial xlPasteValues
End With

Or:

Selection.Value = Selection.Value

 

[T. Valko]

For what it's worth, I find the thing truly hateful.

+1E100

The Excel 2007 ribbon looks like something you'd find on a "Playskool" computer!

 

[hrlngrv]

One of the few things Excel 2007 got right was adding [Ctrl]+[Alt]+V as a shortcut for Paste Special, though arguably not quite as good as Star/Open/LibreOffice Calc's [Shift]+[Ctrl]+V shortcut.