TabHelp - Can it be hidden?

I can create a 2010 custom ribbon and hide virtually any of the ribbon tabs, like TabView, but I cannot seem to make the useless TabHelp invisible. The user, of course, can manually customize their ribbon and hide that tab, but is it true that I cannot do this via XML like I can the other tabs?
The TabHelp consumes ribbon real estate and provides no value, especially when the user can simply type in the "Tell me what you want to do" box to get help.
(I am running Office 2016.)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by dbowlds

I can create a 2010 custom ribbon and hide virtually any of the ribbon tabs, like TabView, but I cannot seem to make the useless TabHelp invisible. The user, of course, can manually customize their ribbon and hide that tab, but is it true that I cannot do this via XML like I can the other tabs?
The TabHelp consumes ribbon real estate and provides no value, especially when the user can simply type in the "Tell me what you want to do" box to get help.
(I am running Office 2016.)

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I think it supposed to be hide-able, but everything I tried with CustomXML failed

Me too. I wonder if this was an oversight on MS' part or intentional. Either way, it is annoying as that tab has no value. Sigh.

I Googled and found some Access examples that worked for TabHelp, some using the <backstage> section, but no luck

I turned it off manually and checked C:\Users\<userid>\Daddy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\Excel.officeUI

to see how MS did it:

Code:

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<mso:tab idQ="mso:HelpTab" visible="false"/>
</mso:tabs>
</mso:ribbon>
</mso:customUI>

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If you really wanted to, you could maybe try to use VBA to add the above to the file

It's a text file, so you just need to see if it's there, and add it if it's not

Thank you Paul!
This line turned out to do the trick:
<tab idQ="HelpTab" visible="false"/>
The reason it was failing for me is MS was inconsistent in their naming conventions. All the other tabs are named "Tab***" versus "***Tab" except for this one evidently. For instance, TabHome is not HomeTab.
Thanks again!
Doug