ATOI365D

Tired of looking for that “Freeze Panes” command? Only to find it under the “View” Tab and have to look for it again tomorrow? Sounds familiar right?! Yesterday I spoke about adding items to your Office Quick Access Toolbar, but did you know you can actually edit your office ribbon to suit your needs? Today I’ll show you just how to do that. Pretty nifty and saves A LOT OF TIME!

Day: 8 of 365, 357 left
Tools: Microsoft Office; Excel 2013
Description: How to edit the Microsoft Office Ribbon

For this example, I’ll change the ribbon in Excel. Keep in mind that you’ll have to do this in every program: if you’ve changed the ribbon in Excel – it will not pull through to PowerPoint.

To edit the ribbon, go to the File tab > Options. Under Options you’ll see “Customize Ribbon”

In the below image you’ll see the “Choose the Commands” list on the left, and the “Customize the Ribbon” list on the right.

Customized office ribbon

The Ribbon is made up of Tabs and Groups. When navigating to different tabs, you’ll see that these are broken up into Groups – which helps to categorize and keep similar things together.
Customize Ribbon 3

First (1) you have to create a new Tab, I’ve called mine “Tracy’s Stuff”. Once you’ve created the Tab – you have to click on it to then rename it (2). Now while standing on the new Tab, click on “New Group” (3). Again you have to stand on the New Group created, to rename it (4). Now that the Tab and various Groups are created you can add commands to it. Click on the group where you would like to add the Command, select the command on the left and then click on the “Add” button in the middle (5). You can add and remove commands in the same way.
Customized office ribbon2

Click on OK to save your changes. (Follow the same steps to customize your ribbon in any of the other programs in the MS Office suite). This is what your ribbon will now look like:
customize ribbon 4

And that’s how easy it is, quite awesome to find all the commands you use daily, in one place!!! See you tomorrow.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not just apply to Office 365 – but to the overall Microsoft Office Suite as well as SharePoint.