How to try the new MUFFIN (“Ribbon”) toolbar of LibreOffice 5.3 in Ubuntu 16.04

LibreOffice 5.3 has several new features and one of them is the new MUFFIN toolbars.

Let’s try them out.

First, we installed LibreOffice 5.3 on Ubuntu using a snap and start the new version of LibreOffice Writer.

By default, the new MUFFIN toolbar is not available because it is currently an experimental feature. We need to enable the support for experimental features.

Click on the menu Tools→Options or press Alt+F12. You get the following,

In LibreOffice→Advanced, we enable the Enable experimental features (may be unstable) and click OK.

We are asked to restart LibreOffice and we click on Restart Now.

After the restart, there are a few new submenus in the View menu. Specifically, there is a Toolbar Layout submenu which a few options. The Notebookbar is the one that resembles the Ribbon in MSOffice. We select it.

The default Notebookbar is the one in the Tabbed style. There are two more styles as shown below.

The following is Contextual groups:

And this one is Contextual single:

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/how-to-try-the-new-muffin-ribbon-toolbar-of-libreoffice-5-3-in-ubuntu-16-04/

13 comments

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    • fethommdevil on February 1, 2017 at 21:25
    • Reply

    How do you get back to the normal layout?

  1. @fethommdevil:

    You get back to the default layout by selecting

    View→Toolbar Layout→Default

    Note that there is a feature in this version of LibreOffice; if you enable the Notebookbar and then disable the Experimental features, you keep the Notebookbar but the View submenus are gone (cannot configure further). You need to enable the Experimental features again in order to change the toolbar settings.

    • fethommdevil on February 2, 2017 at 18:38
    • Reply

    Hm, I can’t see where the option ‘View→Toolbar Layout→Default’ would be. In this mode I get nothing if I click in ‘View’: https://berlinuxlab.net/index.php/s/5CxeRNyHrGOKUFl

  2. @fethommdevil: I can’t see the screenshot. Perhaps you can put it on imgur or a similar website?

    • Bob Putnam on February 20, 2017 at 19:59
    • Reply

    Regarding going back to the default system in Windows, I have the same problem. There’s no way to disable the ribbon bar.

    • Shopify on March 1, 2017 at 19:43
    • Reply

    There is no option to revert the normal layout! Istead of, since I “tried” the new features, LibreOffice crashes always, and even crash the GNOME desktop too! 🙁

  3. @Bob: Here we are discussing the LibreOffice 5.3 snap installation package.
    I believe it is possible even in your case to disable the ribbon bar; see me reply to a comment further up.

  4. @Shopify: Are you using the snap of LibreOffice or some other installation package?

    • HR on March 13, 2017 at 13:39
    • Reply

    Yes. It’s possible to go back and remove the ribbon. Go to: File tab->MenuBar> View > ToolbarLayout>Default

  5. I suggest adding a screen shot to your explanation. It took me awhile before I clicked on “File” I kept looking for a tab called Menu Bar.

    • Bob Putnam on April 12, 2017 at 18:46
    • Reply

    I finally found out why the option to revert to the standard menu wasn’t there for me. I had unchecked the “Enable experimental features…” in the Advanced Options. Once that was checked, I could disable the Ribbon toolbar. 🙂

  6. When I tried this ribbon, the menu disappeared and I couldn’t get back.
    I hade to manually edit this file to restore the default interface:
    /home/MyUserName/.config/libreoffice/4/user/registrymodifications.xcu

    • Walaki on May 19, 2017 at 23:03
    • Reply

    It is possible to go back from the ribbon, but don’t go to the File tab. Instead, click on the icon that is LEFT from the File tab, and THEN you will have a Menubar option. Once you see the menu, it should be easy.

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