I have been using Microsoft Office for many years now, through all its incarnations.

I know there are alternatives out there, but I like to stick to the things I am used to.

I had no problems at all with each upgrade, until I purchased my latest Laptop, which came with Office 2007 installed.  This is where things fell apart.

Office 2007 radically revamped the menu structure on all the applications, and while some people may find it better, I found it confusing.

Over the months, I have managed to find most of the functions and features that I required, but this frequently meant trips to the help area.  What was worse, there was no way in the application to call up the old menu system. 

In Windows, there is a backwards compatibility checkbox, to enable the Start Menu to revert to the old Classic Menu (as they call it) but there is no such facility in Office.

Last week, I came across a wee application – UBitMenu.  I downloaded it and installed it.  It’s a very small program, and running it seemed to have little effect on life.

Until, that is, I opened Office.

It has very nicely inserted a new tab in the menu bar, called, appropriately ‘Menu’.  This now exists in all Office’s applications.

Selecting that tab gives the old Classic Menu.

Brilliant.

It is available here.