How do I get the classic Excel menu back in Excel 2010

High-productivity users continue to express their valid concerns, but this upsets the bullies who know what you want better than you do. (Umm, can you say ... "Microsoft designers?")

Listen to Graham. When sycophants / fanboys say, "Nothing to see here, move along, citizen," it is not your place to point out the software company's errors. If he is happy with the product, but you, a high-productivity user, is not, that Graham says it's okay is all that matters, and you need to accept that.

Why do sensient beings, like high output users, have such difficulty have such difficulty embracing the concept of lame complacency?

I must say, though - to say that the changes "were necessary" shatters all bounds of reality.  No amount of peyote reconciles that fantasy.

P. S. Even though Graham contends that Windows 7+ task switching is better (hahahaha! hahahahaha!), Google CoolSwitch, or just read http://exodusdev.com/content/revert-xp-style-alt-tab-coolswitch-behavior-windows-7-and-windows-vista (if you want to return to fast and productive task switching)

I think it bears noting that *ONLY* the 2007 change aroused and still arouses such outrage from power users. It is very easy to slip to the cop-out attribution that "those people just don't like change." It's not that at all. If so, why wasn't there screaming like this at the far more profound changes that have been made going back to, say, Excel 4?

I cannot be more clear on this: it is about PRODUCTIVITY. It is NOT about "embracing change." Everyone that is screaming about the 2007+ changes embraced all matter of changes for decades on MS Office. Now I, like many power users, have been forced into Office 2007+ interface madness and I have spent VAST amounts of time in honing the squeezing out of every ounce of throughput it can provide. I KNOW the new interface. I HAVE learned it. Just like every other menu proponent who was forced into 2007+. The simple fact is that it is simply incapable of accommodating fast usage the way that 2003 style menus did.

Continued insistence by some that "once you 'get' it you'll find that it does everything just as well, and with improvements" is simply false for power users. It is only true for weak-to-average speed users. No offense, but to tell power users that "average works just fine" is invalid and inappropriate.

It's not too late for Microsoft to restore full menus in the next version. Just make it an option, if nothing else, for God's sake.

Exactly ... And thank you.

"It's like telling someone that plays the piano that all the keys are now in a different place.."  Whilst I can see from where you are coming (positions of keys) I hardly think that comparing a piano and a piece of software in a rapidly-changing technology environment is that useful... :-)

There will always be complaints and criticisms, such as when the Start menu was introduced, and then several years later when it was removed...

BTW, in this context, I am running Win 8.1 and had some experience of Win 7 and 8.0.  (My main OSs before that were XP and Vista.)  In 8 the new Start screen was more disconcerting than anything else and the changes in Win 8.1 sorted it out for me.  I automatically boot into the classic desktop and only see the tiles when I am searching for something.  I could even avoid that if I right-clicked on the Window icon and selected search.

I am very satisfied with Win 8.1, considering it the best one yet; thus I am not sure if I will bother to use the free upgrade to Win 10, and only get there via a new computer.

I am sure I am not the power user you are, but I suggest there are many more like me...