Add a Favorites tab to the ribbon in any Office 2010 app

Microsoft has released a set of customized ribbons for Office 2010.

Each download is for a specific app: the 2010 versions of Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, and Word.

The entire set of downloads is at the Microsoft Office Blog: Download free customized ribbons.

The files are in Exported Office UI format, with a .exportedui file name extension. (You can read more about this format—including a few gotchas—in Office 2010 Inside Out.)

What you get is a single new tab, Favorites, which appears as the first tab on the ribbon for the selected app. It’s filled with the most popular commands for that app, based on customer feedback data collected by Microsoft.

Here’s what the Favorites tab for Outlook looks like.

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You can (and should) tweak this tab so that it reflects the commands you use most often—then export that saved tab to a file so that you can reuse it on another machine.

You could do something like this manually, but having this ready-made file to kick-start the project is much easier. And of course it would be even easier if my custom ribbons could just follow me as I move between different PCs in different places.

Let me know what you think.

6 thoughts on “Add a Favorites tab to the ribbon in any Office 2010 app

  1. Aww, I thought it meant you can pick your own favourites or ones you use most often and not them pick.

    Or at least make it for Windows Live Mail 2011.

  2. These ribbons are completely useless to anyone who knows a dozen keyboard shortcuts and has spent three minutes learning the user interface.

    Just look at what’s on them: Cut, Paste, Bold, Save, Exit.

  3. But, I have no idea what my favorites are. So, I like it when someone else tells me what my favorites are. 🙂

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