Excel 2007 : Hiding Formula Bar and Column Headings

Hi shirl,

Well, it's a bit more tedious in Excel 2007 to hide menu/ribbon items than it was in previous versions, but this should hopefully explain it a little. At the end I've provided a few links that were useful in my search to modify the ribbon bar.

Essentially what we're going to do is hide the built-in 'Show/Hide' section of the 'View' ribbon tab, then replace it with our own custom section, but leaving out the two checkboxes for 'Gridlines' and 'Headings'. These changes will only affect the workbook in which they are done; even if you have two workbooks open you will see that the Show/Hide menu in the second un-edited workbook is normal.

So let's get started!

1. Create a backup copy of your Excel (.xlsx) file, JUST IN CASE!
2. Download the CustomUIEditor from: http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles...muieditor.aspx
3. Install that on your PC (to default install directory is fine)
4. Launch CustomUIEditor from your Start menu
5. Click File -> Open -> then browse for your .xlsx file and open it.
6. In the CustomUI editor window, paste the following code. I added comments to the code so you can see how it was done.
7. In the CustomUIEditor, click File -> Save (or the Save button), then close the editor.
8. Open your Excel 2007 file and if you go to the View tab you should now see that the Gridlines and Headings checkboxes are no longer there!

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Hopefully this helps you out, and as promised here are some useful links:
Ribbon Modification Tools Info:
http://www.tvmcalcs.com/blog/comment...in_excel_2007/
5-part series on Ribbon customization techniques:
http://excelusergroup.org/blogs/nick...X/default.aspx
More examples and steps to customize the Ribbon:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/ribbon.htm
Download list of Control ID's, Group Names, Tab Names, Control Names and Control Types:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

Hopefully that helps without overwhelming you!! The actual customization steps I gave you should take just a few minutes, though.

My guess is that Microsoft, in an effort to standardize their application for most users, made it so that most users can't mess with the interface. This will make it easier to browse and find objects/toolbars/etc. no matter which computer you sit down at, so it's at least partially understandable.

There's so many custom toolbars in Excel 2003 (and earlier), that if you happen to sit down at a random 10 machines, there's a good chance that you'll find users have moved icons, hidden them, changed them in some way, etc.., which makes hopping from computer-to-computer more difficult at times.

Oh well!! Glad I could help you out!