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How do I customize the toolbar/ribbon in Word for Mac 2016? Or, can I customize the toolbar/ribbon?
If not, this should be included.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Perhaps that means that those of us who do not have a 365 subscription will not be able to amend the ribbon. That's pretty poor given the cost of the software itself.
FWIW - this response is not to my friend Jim Gordon but generally to all who read this thread.
I don't disagree with John's time estimate because I believe he's referring to full parity with all functions and user capabilities across the platforms. For those of us who remember the first version of Office 2007 on the PC and how long it took to get a more "user friendly" method of customizing/designing the ribbon, which was called Office 2010, 2-years seems like a reasonable guess. It also took 2 years in the Visual Studio world to move from raw XML coding methods to a "Visual Designer" approach for ribbon customization... I'm referring to what was available to developers like me in VS-2008 and then VS-2010.
A valid question that appears to be asked often is, "Why can't the code used on the PC for ribbon customization also be used on the Mac?" and the real answer is... that is what is being done but coding changes and testing still need to be made no matter what.
Due to the fact that each platform has a different Operating System, all of the coding that interfaces with the Graphic Card drivers and File I/O drivers of the OS must be changed. On the PC there exists an important Database called the Windows Registry, this is where Office stores among many things all of the User Options (called Preferences on the Mac) and on a Mac the Registry does not exist so Plist files are used instead. But access to them is slower and thus code has to be changed in an attempt to optimize performance. This is just a very small example of the hundreds and maybe thousands of things that have to be checked and modified.
Now comes the process of doing this and there are two ways. The first is to make a copy of all code related to the ribbon in the PC version of all Office applications and give it to a team of programmers who strip out all PC stuff and put in the Mac stuff. The second approach is to work in one copy of the code and make it work on both platforms, which eliminates having to maintain multiple copies of the "same" code. This is generally what the Office Product Team at Microsoft is trying to do. One set of code, or at least as much as can be, handling all platforms... and it would probably be prudent to point out that by platform you have to consider all of them, from Mobile devices to the Desktop.
Commonize (sic) and optimize the code... that's the objective and it takes time because there are most likely hundreds of thousands of lines of code that need to be altered. However, month by month, bit by bit Microsoft is rolling out what is ready at that specific point in time. They have changed their 2-3 year package and delivery schedule to a monthly one of what's ready is released. It's not unlike what other software manufacturers are doing these days and either we consumers will love it or hate it. :-)
My point of sharing the above is only to provide some knowledge and perspective about software product development, which I am qualified to provide. It is not a defense of decisions that have been made by others. I do not work for Microsoft... and I will be offended if anyone subsequently wants to claim otherwise or nit pick any information I have taken the time to share.
Why would I be offended? Generally because illiteracy and ignorance offends me.
As for what can be done now... if you are technically proficient you can modify the Ribbon and here's proof of custom ribbon XML code running on Office 2013 for the PC and Office 2016 for the Mac.
As I said, this is the exact same code, in fact it is the exact same "DOTM" template opening on each platform. It's not perfect, visually you can see differences and a few buttons you can see don't actually work... meaning there are still bugs in the Mac ribbon coding, I have reported them and I am certain they will get fixed.
I'm sharing this because Mac Office 2016 users should be aware there are things they can do right now with ribbon customization. Just understand this is early "beta" code related to ribbon customization, which means you/they will find problems that should be reported. There isn't a "user friendly" interface yet for ribbon customization and right now you have to use a tool that only runs on a PC.
But if you have a critical need to make a custom ribbon button or menu appear, as of the October 2015 update, it can be done and John McGhie mentioned above in his posting the things you need to do and links you should explore. The November 2015 update has fixed a few issues that I saw in the first release and I'm certain over the coming months more issues will be fixed.
I'll focus on just the highlighted parts of Stephen's comments, but I do like this whole thread.
A new question which is really what is being asked here between the lines is "W hy have Microsoft released this utter trash?" and "Why do they not have support staff manning the forums?". Both of these are best answered by Microsoft themselves, rather than the community, which due to point #1 we now know this isn't the place for these questions. Even if it was the place for these questions, they are probably worthy of their own thread (In my opinion).
"W hy have Microsoft released this utter trash?"
Certainly many customers think Office 2016 is utter trash. I think the people at Microsoft misjudged what their customers want. When they released Office 2016, I think they honestly thought they had a product that customers would like. When Office 2016 was first released, the press universally reviewed it in glowing terms. If the only people using Office 2016 were reporters and reviewers, then Microsoft would have scored a big hit.
I think a huge part of the problem is Microsoft's reliance on metrics. The wrong metrics. They use click counts to make decisions about which features to support. As you pointed out, the real metrics that ought to count are sales and what customers think of the product. When the vast majority of **reviews by actual customers at Amazon.com** are "I hate it" there is a big problem.
I can't imagine that Office product managers are eagerly sharing the intensely negative feedback with Microsoft's top management. It would make the middle managers look bad. I wonder if Satya Nadella even has a clue or cares about Office for Mac 2016 or how it's doing. Based on his Facebook page, he seems to be focused on Microsoft's Hyderabad, India operation. It appears he prefers to be contacted via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I don't know what it would take to get him interested in any aspect of Microsoft Office for Mac, but if I were to try to get his attention to problems with the product, I would take the approach that he doesn't even know the product exists and then try to bring him up to speed.
"Why do they not have support staff manning the forums?".
At first, they did. They still do in Windows forums. Microsoft support staff know Windows and Office for Windows. They don't have Macs and know next to nothing about Office for Mac and Mac OS X. When they were trying to answer questions in the Mac forums they consistently gave answers that were flat out wrong or applied only to Windows versions of the software. Based on complaints from Mac users, Microsoft decided to try peer-to-peer support. As soon as the Microsoft support staff stopped trying answer questions they were clueless about, the quality of answers skyrocketed.
The bug reporting teams focus on feedback sent via the Smile button and the crash reports. That's across the board Mac and Windows. People in the forum report that they are using the Smile button, and that is great. I am certain that problem reports are getting to the product team. We get to see their reactions to the reports in periodic product updates and the occasional post to their blog.
As someone keenly following this thread who is, as many others are, very dissapointed at the release from Microsoft, i'd just like to mention the following points:
A new question which is really what is being asked here between the lines is "W hy have Microsoft released this utter trash?" and "Why do they not have support staff manning the forums?". Both of these are best answered by Microsoft themselves, rather than the community, which due to point #1 we now know this isn't the place for these questions. Even if it was the place for these questions, they are probably worthy of their own thread (In my opinion).
The solution for me is simple - I will use the old version of Microsoft and won't be paying a penny for Office 2016. Microsoft aim to make money - not buying their product if it is rubbish is the strongest signal. For those of you disappointed with office 2016 due to it's lacking features, i'd suggest contacting Microsoft directly and asking for a refund. Fortunately for me this version of Office came from my institution and didn't cost me, but if it did, i'd be asking to be refunded. Short of returns, i'd make sure not to continue any subscriptions (I am not sure of the exact model used to sell this, but ultimately, stop paying for it and try to get your money back - kick up a stink with Microsoft themselves).
We can fill this forum with additional posts regarding how angry we are, sure, but this doesn't seem to be solving the problem and as Rich says, this feedback may not even be getting to the staff responsible or able to fix the problem. Further posts of anger or "me too" will just make it more difficult to find any new, updated answers as the situation changes.
I'll be following, but I don't intend to post again unless I see of, or hear of changes due to updates.
Not going to get involved in the interpersonal stuff, but totally agree with May on the other points.
I am really upset that my work has been made a lot harder.
And it doesn't help to know that if I had studied coding or platform development that I would be able to figure out how to customize the toolbar myself. Isn't that what we're paying subscription money for?
And just found another missing feature. I used to be able to select just a single paragraph and get its word count. Great for copy fitting. Now the only word count I can ever get is for the entire document. Or is this another customizable feature I can program myself with my degree in computer science?