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Installed Office 2013 on Windows 8 today. It's great, except for one thing, the all caps ribbon titles are inconsistent with the title case titles everywhere else in Windows 8. Is there a registry setting that will let me change this?

consistency

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    If this had been a less advanced piece of software, I'd suggested looking into the EXE using a hex editor or resource editor, but considering this is Microsoft Office, I'd recommend against this. It might cause all sorts of havoc. Oct 27, 2012 at 9:53
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    You're right, it's horrible. The status bar is also in all caps too. Jan 2, 2015 at 10:28
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    upvoted as a protest to Microsoft bad taste.
    – Florian F
    Mar 16, 2017 at 10:17

6 Answers 6

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Of course, it can be fixed. Simply put a space before or after the Tab title. I prefer putting it after.

  • Right click the tab heading > Customize the ribbon > Click on the tab you want to rename. Either right click and select "Rename" or click the "Rename" button below.

  • Then put a space before or after the tab title.

  • The tab title will now appear in sentence case.

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  • I've undeleted this, but it would be nice to edit your answer to include all the steps necessary to do this. If your answer doesn't appear to actually answer the question, you should probably expand it and make it more descriptive.
    – slhck
    Oct 30, 2012 at 8:11
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    Albeit a clunky workaround, this works, and now they're nice again subjective! All but "File" Jan 27, 2013 at 22:39
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    This doesn't work for me. When I click to rename it doesn't respond.
    – Yuck
    Jan 28, 2013 at 16:50
  • See Zonder's answer for a link to his batch file that automates the process of modifying the menu names in all the Office applications. Quite a time saver.
    – raven
    Mar 16, 2013 at 16:29
  • I have the same problem as Yuck - right-click, Rename, nothing happens; same if you use the Rename button below. However, Zonder's download worked great.
    – GeoffM
    Jun 28, 2013 at 20:18
19

No, apparently, there isn't. Here is what seems to be an official answer from Microsoft (thread):

The development team discussed changing the tabs to proper case, but made a firm decision that they would leave them all caps as designed. There is no way to change them in the registry, but if you have an add-in that creates new tabs, they will be whatever case you specify in your custom ribbon file.

There is a registry setting to disable all caps menu in the Visual Studio 2012 (discussed here, for example):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General
DWORD: SuppressUppercaseConversion
Value: 1

But this does not work for the new Office 2013. Just in case I have tried these settings (of course, none of them worked):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\SuppressUppercaseConversion
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\General \SuppressUppercaseConversion

If you need more information on this choice, here is a good thread at ux.stackexchange.com, where you can find a designer's opinion on that.

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    On that SE thread I found the following quote from MS: "We've chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences". Really? What the beep's up with the Win8 UI then if they wanted to maintain visual consistency?
    – Karan
    Oct 27, 2012 at 23:00
  • Microsoft made a lot of changes in Windows 8. They wouldn't want to risk loosing market share by pushing all the planned changes at once. Oct 27, 2012 at 23:06
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    Microsoft has never kept Office or their other apps consistent with the OS. They tend to be a testbed for UI ideas. Oct 27, 2012 at 23:30
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    This answer is incorrect; there is, in fact, a workaround to this horrible design: superuser.com/a/495227/6714
    – Tullo_x86
    Feb 14, 2013 at 0:44
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    The funny/moronic part is that Windows 8, despite its flaws, didn't go around capitalizing assorted parts of the UI for zero benefit. (The caps don't convey any info, they just make it look worse. The beta of Office2013 even had the mailbox name in all caps - at least they backed off on that one.)
    – MichaelGG
    Mar 18, 2014 at 8:11
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You can also try unOFFIC (http://unoffic.migeel.sk/). It's a small in-memory patch for all Office 2013 apps that fixes ALL CAPS not only on the ribbon, but also in the status bar and a few other spots. It doesn't modify the Office EXEs in any way, so it should be pretty safe and update resilient.

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right click on the tab title, choose customize ribbon, click rename and put a blank space in front of the tab title. Click OK. Do the same for all the other titles.

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  • Does it really allow you to do that to default tabs like File, Edit? I'm pressing Rename and nothing happens. Oct 30, 2012 at 8:42
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+50

The all-caps is a software feature. The new release of Visual Studio 2012 uses all-caps as well. Microsoft is probably testing if users accept this new look. Depending on how things turn out, they'll probably release a patch (service packs) to either change all-caps to normal (Office, Visual Studio, etc) or normal to all-caps (File Explorer, etc).

enter image description here

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    Note that Vladimir's answer points out a way to change this in Visual Studio.
    – Daniel Beck
    Oct 31, 2012 at 20:52
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    There is option to make Visual Studio IDE into normal case, by editing registry.
    – Jones
    Feb 4, 2013 at 10:49
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A Microsoft MVP has complete menu customization files available for download, here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/office_2013_release-office_install/proper-case-for-office-2013-ribbon-menus/d28ad27b-a727-4b63-a6e1-46deb15696a8

These can be safely imported into Office 2013 apps through the "Import/Export" feature in the ribbon customization menus, and they will proper-case the entire menu.

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