The ribbon was designed to make all the commonly used commands visible so that people can more easily discover the full potential of an Office 2010 program. But many people use an Office program to perform the same set of tasks all the time, and for them, seeing buttons (or even entire groups of buttons) that they never use is just another form of clutter.
Would you prefer to see fewer commands than appear on the ribbon by default? Or would you prefer to see more specialized groups of commands? Well, you can. From the Customize Ribbon page of an Office 2010 program’s Options dialog box, you can control the tabs that appear on the ribbon, and the groups that appear on the tabs.
On this page, you can customize the ribbon in the following ways:
● If you rarely use a tab, you can turn it off.
● If you use the commands in only a few groups on each tab, you can remove the groups you don’t use. (The group is not removed from the program, just from its tab.)
● You can move a predefined group by removing it from one tab and then adding it to another.
● You can duplicate a predefined group by adding it to another tab.
● You can create a custom group on any tab and then add commands to it. (You cannot add commands to a predefined group.)
● You can create a custom tab on the ribbon. For example, you might want to do this if you use only a few commands from each tab and you find it inefficient to flip between them.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with the ribbon to come up with the configuration that best suits the way you work. If at any point you find that your new ribbon is harder to work with rather than easier, you can always reset everything back to the default configuration.
Tip: If you upgraded from Office 2007 or an earlier version of Office, you might find that some commands present in the earlier version are not available on the ribbon. A few old features have been abandoned, but others that people used only rarely have simply not been exposed in the user interface. If you want to use one of these hidden features, you can make it a part of your program environment by adding it to the ribbon or to the Quick Access Toolbar. You can find a list of all the commands that do not appear on the ribbon but are still available in a program by displaying the Customize Ribbon page of the program’s Options dialog box and then clicking Commands Not In The Ribbon in the Choose Commands From list.
