Outlook keep resetting ribbon back to default after changes

Hello Mats Samuelsson,

 

Good day! Thanks for posting in Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you.

  

I understand Outlook keeps resetting the home ribbon to default settings after removing some of the ribbon groups such as OneNote and My Templates add-in.

 

After through research and consultations it has been concluded that the feature you are inquiring about is a product design. However, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention, your suggestion is very helpful, and I believe it could make the use of Outlook even better. We will surely raise your concerns to our Product Development Team and hopefully this can be included in the future updates.

 

In the meantime, please provide feedback on this feature request by creating a new post in the Feedback Portal at Outlook · Community (microsoft.com). Our Product Development Team is committed to enhancing the customer experience by continually examining suggestions to include in the design and development of future product upgrades based on your suggestions. Hopefully, your suggestion will help many users in the future.

 

Thank you for your time and understanding. For other questions, feel free to add your post in the Microsoft Community.

 

Stay safe and healthy.  

 

Sincerely,

Simbarashe | Microsoft Community Moderator

I have using Outlook for over 25 years and have always customized the ribbon (or button bars before Office 2003) to fit my requirements and I neither need nor want Microsoft's "assistance" in choosing the groups and commands on the ribbon. For years now I quite often find that the the ribbon has suddenly changed, today I am fairly sure that this happens whenever Outlook updates (automatically by way of the cursed Click-To-Run). Repeatedly I find that many of the buttons or groups that I DON'T NEED OR WANT and have removed manually (for example Language or Immersive View) are pushed back onto the ribbon and I have to remove them manually again in order to free up real estate on the ribbon. Unfortunately for me my organization controls the update channel settings so I can't even set updates to the semi-annual channel. MS should show an option to save all customizations BEFORE Outlook updates but it seems that they rather arrogantly assume that they know better than I do what is best for me.

This annoyance has been frustrating me for years and in spite of many searches on the internet I have yet to find a solution to this problem ("It's not a bug, it's a feature..."). I am hoping that some out there with VB experience will commiserate with me and write a VB script that will prevent updates from changing the ribbon.

Don't get me wrong, I think that having a customizable ribbon as well as a Quick Access Toolbar is one of the many outstanding features of Outlook however if MS is going to give us customization why don't they let us keep it the way we like it?

Are you friggen kidding? Resetting peoples settings is an intentional design? This is the dumbest thing I've heard and why I use a Mac for anything not required by my work.

"But with Windows you have more control and customization than a Mac, there are 10 trillion minute infinitely customizable details. We included so many you literally won't be able to find how to tweak what should be basic available changes. Like in Outlook, we think you should only get to make the docked calendar so small so we limit the sizing. But you can go into settings and find a way to set preview columns literally down to the pixel. But the good news is once you get everything set up to how YOU prefer, we are going to reset it to how we like it. Because we care about the user"

From another post: Are you friggen kidding? Resetting peoples settings is an intentional design? This is the dumbest thing I've heard...

Fortunately I save my customized ribbons using the export feature. But really, why does Microsoft allow customizations if the intent is to remove them on a regular basis? Microsoft: please explain NOW.

Absolutely bot responses.

I am tired of resetting any and all Microsoft products customizations literally every other day. Isn't there a preferences file somewhere that can be saved and then copied over when ribbons get rewritten?

I already save the customized ribbon as you suggest. I use it to restore my customized ribbon. The problem is that Microsoft keeps overriding the customized ribbon with the default ribbon so I have to restore it. This problem has arisen recently. For years it was not a problem. It does not seem to be a problem with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.