How To: Automatically Hide the Ribbon Menu System in Excel

Teach Excel demonstrates how to completely hide the Ribbon menu system in Excel 2007 as soon as the workbook is opened. This will be done by writing a macro which hides the Ribbon only for the specific workbook in which the macro is implemented. Some helpful shortcuts are Ctrl+F1 which partially hides the ribbon, Alt+F11, which opens the Visual Basic screen, and Alt+F8, which opens the macros list. First, hit Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic screen. Then double-click "This Workbook" on the left-side panel and a window should open. Click the drop-down menu that says "(General)" and click "Workbook." The macro will be written between the lines "Private Sub Workbook_Open()" and "End Sub." Type Application.ExecuteExcel4macro "show.toolbar(""Ribbon"",False)" and then close the screen and save the workbook as a macro-enabled workbook. Close your workbook and reopen it to see if the Ribbon has disappeared. The benefit of this is to create files that can not be edited by others, only read. The only way to get the Ribbon back is to delete the macro and save the workbook again.