You can easily customize the Ribbon to show only the controls you want to display. This video shows how to clear the Ribbon in Microsoft Office Word so it contains only a single button. The button inserts a graphic into the open Word document at the cursor location. Why? Well, really it's just to demo the Ribbon thing. But some day you might want to insert images into a document too, who knows?
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Forum: Ribbon and Start from Scratch
OfficeRibbon.StartFromScratch Property
Duration: 4 minutes, 11 seconds