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You can use addintools Classic Menu for Office. It isn't too expensive (costing $22 to $35, depending on the edition), and last I checked, it can be deployed by GPO using an MSI. After paying $130 to $500 or more for Office, it might feel like adding insult to injury (you'd expect MS to provide an optional menu alternative, at least with Office 2007). Yet, it is an affordable alternative to increase your productivity if you can't stand the ribbon (or maybe a way to selectively give users on your organization that aren't comfortable with the ribbon a way to transition).

Kind of like the menu addon for Office 2010.
If you don't believe me:
http://www.addintools.com/office2010/professionalplus/index.html

Thank God for the ClassicMenus Add-on
http://www.addintools.com/office2010/menutoolbar/index.html

Indeed, the hidden extra functionality is infuriating. A way around it is to use Addintools Classic Menu for Office

I am still not as productive in Office 2007 as I was with previous versions of Office, and neither is everyone else in my department.

It might be worth deploying one of these if you want your sane interfaces back:

http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/featuretourpart3.php
http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/
http://www.addintools.com/index.html

The starter edition of the first one is free, and amongst other things includes a classic menu interface for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The others need paid licences for business use, but also support 2010, and the third one has versions that support Access, Outlook, etc.

It's worth skipping my mod points for this issue. I'll reply to you out of the 5 possible posts that are relevant.

I hate the Ribbon. But I banked on Rule ____ of the net that says if there's a purpose for someone's potential small project, it has better than even odds of existing.

Classic Menu for Office

http://www.addintools.com/

It's a plugin for Office that puts mostly similar menus back.

So the comparison becomes:
A: Office 2007 (or 2010?) with Old Menus
vs
LibreOffice (OpenOffice.org / branding squabbles with Oracle)

Classic Menu for Office - http://www.addintools.com/index.html It's not free though.

In my opinion, it really depends. The Ribbon was a royal pain for the first 2-3 weeks, because I had to find commands that I used to know where they were. That was, indeed, annoying. Once I found those though, the ribbon made it a whole lot easier to find commands that I used less consistently, or that seemed to be obscured. Styles, mail merging, tracking changes,

I remember having to deal with page numbering in Office 2003, and spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. I fired up Office 2007, and had the job done in about five minutes. While adding comments has been around since office 97, no one ever used it. I can't tell you how annoying group projects were when it came time to make the final version to hand in, because showing the rest of the group how to add comments was an exercise in futility. Now, I can tell them "Click 'New Comment' in the 'Review' Tab".

I don't think the Ribbon is the perfect UI, nor do I think that it should become a universal interface (DirectDVD is a prime example of a software UI that doesn't need it), but I do think that in the case of Office, it did solve a bunch of problems that the original UI had. Options are available to help if you're having issues finding something specific.

Sorry if I come off as an MS shill, I'm not on their payroll, nor am I a fanboi, nor am I trying to attack your personal preference, and I apologize if I came across as such.

MS has done it best to fool honest folks like you that you have no choice but to downgrade to XP just because of their (disastrous IMO) UI switch. Office2007 UI has value ... *as a HYBRID*.

Yea yea, "stuff wants to be free", but this is plugin I gladly paid for:
http://www.addintools.com/

So, back to Win 7. I hear it's actually got some solid stuff in it - Vista rebuilt tech, but with at least some of the rust scraped off. I'm sure some of the other UI will be junk too. So I'll get a fix for that. The rest of the OS may actually have useful deep support for emerging tech, especially when the famed MS-Essential SP1/SP2 emerges.

Here you go:
http://www.addintools.com/

That will replace the bewildering ribbon with a proper menu, the way Dog intended it it to be.

A Chinese company called Addintools has a little utility that will put the menus back and make Office 2007 usable again. http://www.addintools.com/

Too bad they didn't mention giving a patch to Office 2003, since 2007 is utterly unusable, distracting and the Ribbon interface needs a seriously large monitor not to completely destroy screen real estate.

I wish MSFT would give a "Ribbon off/Classic Mode" switch. Its horrible. Its so bad there is software to douche out Ribbon:
http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/
We really, really shouldn't need crap like this, MSFT.

Here is your solution: http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/default.htm

Well, as a desktop Admin, you should be aware of Adintools and their Classic Menus for Office 2007 http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/default.htm