The Ribbon is Excel’s command menu interface. It organizes commonly used actions together in an intuitive and visual way. These are the main parts of the Ribbon.
What Tabs Are In The Ribbon?
There are 7 Tabs in Excel’s default setup. In addition to these 7 Tabs, there is an 8th one called the Developer tab that is hidden by default. You can read this post to find out How To Enable The Developer Tab. The Developer tab contains commands related to recording macros and writing visual basic for application (VBA) code. This tab is hidden by default as most people will likely never want or need to use it.
Excel also has Contextual Tabs. These tabs only appear when a particular type of object is selected in the worksheet. For example, if we select a table object in our workbook, the Table Tools Design tab will appear which contains commands only related to tables.
Selecting Commands From The Ribbon Using Keyboard Shortcuts
Commands can be accessed in the regular way by using the mouse or by touch on touch screen devices, but they can also be accessed with keyboard shortcuts. To use any command in the ribbon with a keyboard shortcut, start by pressing the Alt key. This will display letters underneath the tabs that represent the next step in the shortcut. If we wanted to use a command in the Home tab we would press H next. Now each command in the ribbon will have a letter(s) or number next to it again representing the next step in the shortcut. If we wanted to perform the indent command, we would press 6 on the keyboard. Every command is accessible in this way, but some of the most used commands in Excel have much simpler keyboard shortcuts in addition to these. For Example, using this method to access the bold command results in Alt + H + 1, but it also has the much easier to execute and remember shortcut Ctrl + B.
Customizing The Ribbon
You can customize your Ribbon in a few different ways.
Rearrange the order of tabs or groups within tabs or rename any tab or group.Remove groups from existing tabs or remove entire tabs from the ribbon.Add a custom group of commands of your choice to an existing tab in the ribbon.Add your own custom tabs with custom groups of commands of your choice. These can be commands that are already available in the default ribbon, but you can also add hidden commands that aren’t available in the default ribbon. This is great for creating a personalized menu of your most frequently used commands.
To customize the ribbon in any of these ways right click anywhere on the ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon from the menu.
Move Or Rename Tabs And Groups
Move Or Rename Tabs And Groups.
Remove Tabs Or Groups
Remove Tabs or Groups from the Ribbon.
Add Custom Tabs And Groups
Add custom Tabs and Groups to the Ribbon.
