When you open Excel, this is how it looks.
Ribbon is like an expanded menu. It depicts all the features of Excel in easy to understand form. Since Excel has many features so they are grouped into several ribbons. The most important ribbons are – Home, Insert, Formulas, Page Layout & Data.
Excel has further categorize ribbon into two categories and they are as follows:
Ribbon Tabs – The tabs are used to group similar commands together. The home tab is used for basic commands such as formatting the data to make it more presentable, sorting and finding specific data within the spreadsheet.
Ribbon Bar – The bars are used to group similar commands together. As an example, the Alignment ribbon bar is used to group all the commands that are used to align data together.
Excel ribbon search bar
There is also a very useful search bar in the Ribbon. It says – Tell me what you want to do. Just type in what you are looking for, and Excel will help you find it.
How to collapse Excel ribbon
You can collapse the ribbon to get extra space on the screen. To do so, right click anywhere on the ribbon, and then click Collapse the Ribbon (or press CTRL + F1).
Alternatively, you can adjust how the ribbon is displayed with the Ribbon Display Options.
💡 Note
Certain programs, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, may install additional tabs to the Ribbon. These tabs are called add-ins.
How to customize the ribbon
Customizing Excel ribbon is super easy but why do you need to customize it? There can be many reasons such as, suppose you do not wish to see some of the tabs on the ribbon, or you would like to add some tabs that are missing such as the Developer tab.
As we mentioned, it’s easy to customize Excel ribbon. Below are the steps which you can follow to customize it.
Step 1: Right click anywhere on the ribbon, and then click Customize the Ribbon.
Step 2: A new window show up, click on New Tab.
Step 3: Add the commands you like.
Step 4: You can also rename the tab and group as well as you have an option to overwrite default icon to others as per your requirement.
There is also a small option called Import/Export, which helps you to export or import your customization settings.
💡 Note
You can also add new groups to existing tabs. To hide a tab, uncheck the corresponding check box. Click Reset, Reset all customizations, to delete all Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar customizations.
Step 5: Click OK.
Understanding Excel Quick Access Toolbar
Located just above the Ribbon, the Quick Access Toolbar lets you access common commands no matter which tab is selected.
By default, it includes the Save, Undo, Redo and AutoSave commands. You can add other commands depending on your preference.
💡 Note
If you use an Excel command frequently, you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. You can even add commands to the Quick Access Toolbar that are not in the ribbon.
To add a command to the Quick Access Toolbar, execute the following steps.
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