Office Tabs Brings Tabs To Microsoft Office

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 25, 2009
Updated • Feb 24, 2013
Microsoft, Microsoft Office
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22

Working with multiple open documents in Microsoft Office applications like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel is not as comfortable as it can be. The documents are all placed in the same interface with no straightforward way to switch between documents easily (the keyboard shortcut Alt Number will do the trick but one has to know the number of documents to use it effectively and it is limited to a maximum of nine documents).

Office Tabs brings a possible solution in form of a tabbed browsing interface for Microsoft Office. The software program supports Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint and will display a toolbar beneath the ribbon interface in Office 2007 that is displaying all open documents. A double-click will quickly open a new document and a click on existing tabs will display that document in the foreground.

The tabbed interfaces for the three Microsoft Office products can be configured individually. This includes disabling the tabbed interface in an Office module, configuring the layout (colors, appearance and position) and shortcuts.

Custom Tabs is compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2008 on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the Chinese homepage of the developer.

Update: The program has been moved to its own domain where it can be downloaded free of charge. The program is free for personal use and does not come with any time or feature limitations.  Note that it is fully compatible with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. There is also a version for Office 2013 that the developer of the program makes available.

Several new and exciting features have been integrated into the Office Tabs application by its author in recent time. It is now for instance possible to save all open documents with a single click. That's great if you have been working on multiple documents and want to save them all at once.

You can also move tabs around via drag and drop, lots of shortcuts to speed up your work, and options to hide or show the tab bar.

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Comments

  1. Tonny Yang said on January 27, 2011 at 10:02 am
    Reply

    Thanks, but there is no Office Tab for Office 2008, I have asked the publisher by email. May be you have made a mistake. Office Tab can only be used for Office 2003/2007/2010.

    The download link is http://www.extendoffice.com/download/office-tab.html

    thx

    1. ucmapi said on February 15, 2011 at 6:42 pm
      Reply

      ucmapi has released a totally new version of office tabs, which support word, excel, power-point, VISIO and project. Please download them via http://www.ucmapi.com/download.php

  2. sabbie said on August 4, 2010 at 7:58 pm
    Reply

    This is a 30 day trial so I am looking a freebee. This same author does have a WORD tab addin for 2010I just found I think for free (same author) but I want an Excel one…I am searching. The WORD doesn’t render right on MS 2007 but I can live with that. Why are they are not options for ths type of add on? Hard to write?

  3. wangmingbai said on February 24, 2010 at 10:06 am
    Reply

    office tab 4.0 is available, go to check it out in officedocumenttab.com. if you have any suggestions and questions., i am glad you can post it in my website.

    I am planning to update this add-on to compatible with office 2010 in next version.

    regards

  4. sam said on December 14, 2009 at 4:44 am
    Reply

    I have office 2003 running on Windows 7- I LOVE it! it’s so nice not to have 20+ windows open- this is the coolest thing ever! oh yea, its free!

  5. farzad said on December 6, 2009 at 5:18 pm
    Reply

    Hi,

    i have installed the same but how can I inactive it? Thanks

  6. BASiQ said on October 22, 2009 at 8:22 pm
    Reply

    My specs for information.

    HP dv2000t Laptop
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Core 2 Duo T9300 2.50 GHz
    Office 2007 12.0.4518.1014

    installation went flawlessly. Using it now.
    No issues for me with CPU or closing.

    1. wangmingbai said on February 21, 2010 at 4:28 am
      Reply

      new version is available form http://www.officedocumenttab.com

      regards

  7. sadiknev said on August 27, 2009 at 8:20 am
    Reply

    Excel addin working great in 2003.

    very please i downloaded word tab to get the same Joy in word, but looks like Word tab is not working too bad for word

  8. MOe said on August 26, 2009 at 12:18 pm
    Reply

    where can i find the effects on powerpoint 2007?

    pllzzz tll me

  9. sc0rpi0n83 said on August 26, 2009 at 11:50 am
    Reply

    Not working with PowerPoint 2007 under XP Professional :(
    Word/Excel now working with Tabs :)

  10. Dels said on August 26, 2009 at 5:18 am
    Reply

    that something Microsoft need to incorporate to next version of Office since i already see this feature long time on AbiWord or KingSoft Office (Chinese office 2003 clone)

  11. Jojo said on August 26, 2009 at 4:52 am
    Reply

    I must be missing something. In my Office 2007, multiple documents open in new windows. Alt-tab switches among them. In Office 2003, use Ctrl-F6 to switch among open docs.

  12. Duncan said on August 26, 2009 at 2:28 am
    Reply

    Works well on Win7 x64

  13. Dave said on August 26, 2009 at 1:41 am
    Reply

    Works perfectly on my Win 7 RC x64

  14. Officer Gates said on August 26, 2009 at 12:56 am
    Reply

    Doesn’t work with my Win 7. Prevented Office from closing and slowed everything.

    Too bad, because it’s a good idea

    1. Tonny Yang said on January 27, 2011 at 10:08 am
      Reply

      Hi, I have my Office Tab in Win 7 without any problem. I am using the latest version Office Tab 6.50, you can go to try the latest version from here http://www.extendoffice.com/download/office-tab.html

      or you can just send an email to the software publisher, he is a nice man.

    2. avanmiller said on September 9, 2009 at 5:32 pm
      Reply

      Not true, I have a HP system running Windows 7 (32Bit) Ultimate and it works great, not problems installing or running. Try reinstalling.

  15. libeco said on August 25, 2009 at 10:30 pm
    Reply

    It sounded like such an excellent idea. Too bad it doesn’t work well for me. It uses 100% of one of my CPU cores while only having a blank document open. After a while Word becomes unresponsive and I have to Ctrl + Alt + Del to shut Word down. Using XP Pro SP3 (Dutch) and Office 2007 (Dutch).

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