By Rob Helm [bio]
Posted: Apr. 24, 2006

The following is an illustration accompanying an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

Macros and other extensions that use custom menus and toolbars will be less accessible to users in the new Office 2007 user interface. Shown above are a custom toolbar (with two buttons) and menu (with two commands) in Office 2003 (top), and their corresponding position in the Office 2007 Add-Ins tab after an upgrade (bottom).

To reach these commands, Office 2007 users select the Add-Ins tab and navigate to the menu option or toolbar button. The menus or toolbar buttons will not always be visible, as they were in Office 2003. Users can move individual commands to a small Quick Access bar (not shown) in Office 2007 to make them visible all the time. However, developers must wrap existing macros or other extensions with new RibbonX extensions if they want custom commands to appear elsewhere in the Office 2007 user interface by default.