How can I have my old colored ribbon icons in Outlook? After update 1809 (Build 10827.20138)

Totally agreed. For me Office is UNUSABLE with these new icons, just totally distracting and off putting. 

To roll back to the sane icons you need to disable updates and revert to a sane build (See FIX below).

(MICROSOFT you are forcing me to forgoe security updates to have Sane / Usable icons?)

*********** FIX ***********  (This works for Office 365 / Version 2016)

In an Office 365 Program, e.g. Outlook

Click File -> "Office Account". Under "Updates" choose "Disable".

Then, in an elevated command prompt and type the following:-

cd "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun"

officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.10730.20102

Reopen office programs and your icons will be reverted.

I hope that someone comes up with a way (e.g. via a resource editor) to change the icons in modern builds so that I can have security updates again.

Cheers,

 Luke.