Microsoft Office 2010 “Outspace”, switching it on/off

Known only by its codename at the moment, Microsoft Office “Outspace” (MOO?) is one of the more noticeable changes to the new Office suite. Upon clicking of the Office button, you’re whisked away into a fancy task-oriented view that lets you manage your open document, presentation, or spreadsheet at a much higher level. (More details pending technical beta release.)

Microsoft Office "Outspace", turned on Microsoft Office "Outspace", turned off 

Figures 1 and 2 -- Microsoft Office “Outspace” turned on and off (Microsoft Word)

For those of us that hate change, fear not. You can revert back to the old way of doing things with a quick registry tweak. Simply navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0CommonToolbars (creating that key if it doesn’t already exist) and create a DWORD named UseOutspace. Give it a value of 0 or 1 (representing disabled or enabled, respectively) and you’re done. You’ll notice with Outspace off, a piece of the original Office button shows up. This is a bug that’ll be cleaned up as the product matures.