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MitchellVIIFlag for United States of America

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How do I add Macros to the Word 2007 Ribbon?

I have some Macros I would like to add to the Developer Tab on my Word Ribbon.  For the life of me, I can't see how this is done.  It seems like the ONLY thing you can customize is the Quick Access Toolbar.  On the Quick Access Toolbar, we are only allowed little icons instead of words and the list of icons is very limited.

What happens if I want to add 20 macros to the Quick Access Toolbar?  Do I have to remember what 20 different icons all mean?  Seriously, it can't be THIS horrible, can it?

Man, do I ever miss my easily configurable Menus and  Toolbars.  M$, sometime I really hate you guys.
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Brian Pierce
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Without the typo !
Simple answer is you can't. You can't add anything to the ribbon. I think that the removal of the ability to customise the toolabars is a retrograde step - but that's what Microsoft have done.

You can add macros to the Quick Access Toolbar, click on the Office Icon (top left), select 'Word Options' and customize.Under Choose Commands from, select Macros.
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KCTS,

Three inexplicable programming choices by M$ is Office 2007:

1.  The Ribbons.  Acctually, you can make some changes to them, but only using code.  On the user-friendly scale, about a minus 3.
2. Changing the HTML Engine for rendering HTML in Outlook 2007 from the IE/Engine to the Word/Engine (thus making every CSS-based HTML Email Marketing Template wriiten in the last 5 year USELESS).
3.  Adding the Navigation Pane to Access so that anyone who had ever created a form which perfectly fit the desktop space now find that it doesn't fit and has to re-design everything to make room for a new feature nobody even wanted.

M$ has definitely moved in the direction of "hard--coding" design elements into their products.  If these had been brilliant additions, I might be more forgiving, but it seems like they chose the dumbest, most onerous and useless and made them the centerpiece.

Madness.  Office 2007 has some nice functionality, but I have to say that the bad things are so bad that the entire effort was a complete and utter failure.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  XPS?  M$ new PDF-killer?  Outlook 2007 doesn't even come with an XPS-viewer installed and MS doesn't offer one.  Outlook 2007 doesn't even support their own proprietery software!

I am sure there are others but these three are so utterly boneheaded to you really have to wonder what the hell is going on at M$.
I have been testing office 2007 for some time now. I'm going back to 2003 and will definately not be rolling 2007 out to users. Not only is it virtually non-customisabe but in my experience the ribbons make what used to be very simple tasks complex. They are supposed to be intuitive. I do't know who they did the user testing on but even though I have been using Office 2007 for some time It still takes me ages to do even some quite basic stuff as the tools are hidden behind 'friendly ribbons'. Take the use of autotext for example - it used to be so simple. Even after prologed use I find myself having to use this is how it worked in 2003 - how do I do it in 2007 option!


KCTS,

It really is hard for one to put one's finger on what is the WORST new feature of Office 2007.

Their new BLACK BOX approach to things where so much is hard-coded in (love it because we said you should) makes no sense no matter how you look at it.

The rationale behind the Ribbon?  Focus-testing?  I don't think they did it, except maybe with 5th graders who said they wanted more pretty pictures and big icons to look at.  I mean seriously, did their testing really tell them that people were all that MISERABLE using highly customizable drop-menus?

As always, M$ has created software not to be the best it can be, but to force you to buy MORE of THEIR software.  Cynical to say the least.  Most clear-cut example of this is using the Word HTML Rendering Engine in Outlook.  All of the highly customizable content available when they used the IE Engine are now just gone.  We are back to simple tables and frames circa 5 years ago.

Someone in charge at M$ obviously REALLY likes BIG ICONS.  You notice how throughout Vista and Office, all of the icons got bigger?  You know, I could have provided a long list of MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS for both, but BIG ICONS wasn't on my short list.

I think the mantra in the M$ design Studios must have been this:  "Ok folks, let's take what used to be easy and make it difficult and lets take what used to be difficult and make it impossible."

You think M$ isn't capable of screwing things up this badly on purpose?  I have one word for you:

ZUNE.
ZUNE: (fly on the wall at development meeting heard the following...)

"Hey guys, I have a great idea!  Let's compete with the uber-popular, slim and sexy iPod!  We need to differentiate out product.  Their is slim, cool, futuristic and white.  Let's make ours thick, clunky and s***-brown.  The iPod has little directional arrows on their control button, so let's make ours out of really cheap black plastic with not indication at all of what you should push to make it work.  Last point, let's call it something that doesn't mean anything that no one can relate to and doesn't even sound cool.  We almost named it "The Brick" but marketing decide that was too literal..."