A fellow editor reminded the folks on LinkedIn a few days ago that it’s possible to customise the ribbon in Word. Indeed, you can customise the ribbon in any other of the Microsoft Office programs – Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access.
© Sue Littleford 2022
Well, editorial LinkedIn lit up! Why did we not know this? people cried, scurrying off to experiment.
Then a couple of days later, the same topic came up at our weekly Cloud Club West meeting, an international ‘local’ group of editors from the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading who meet under the Institute’s auspices. Er, I said, do you not remember the presentation with handout that I gave you on this not so long ago? Cue confused faces.
Well, it turns out that was actually two full years ago (time flies), and a lot of people have joined us since then! So I dug out my old handout and shared it.
Then I thought, why not share it more widely? So here it is, all tidied up.
Why would I customise the ribbon in Word, or anything else?
Because one size does not always fit all.
Depending on the work we do, we’ll always have no need for some menu options (commands) and use others very heavily. Some we’ll use very occasionally – vital at those times, but we often forget which part of the ribbon they’re on because we don’t use them frequently.
By customising the ribbon, you can hide some tabs, or show others, but the best bit is you can add one or more tabs of your own with your most-used commands on it – or them.
You can group commands together to match your workflow.
You can rename commands added to your own new tab!
You can rename groups on all tabs.
You can add buttons to launch your favourite macros.
You can, in short, remake (within limits) the Word ribbon to fit with you and work with you to increase efficiency and decrease frustration.
Sounds good! What else can I customise?
It’s not just Word, remember: Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and Access all have the same functionality.
Best of all, it’s not just the ribbon you can customise. At the top of the screen, always visible no matter where you are in the ribbon, is the Quick Access Toolbar. Customisable. Give it a go – right-click on it!
And at the foot of the screen, always visible, is the Status Bar. Customisable. Give that a go, too – right-click on it!
When I was tidying up the handout for you, just for fun I tried it in PDF-Xchange Editor and in Adobe Acrobat, and yes, entirely different programs offer it, accessed the same way as in Microsoft – right-click on an unused bit of ribbon/toolbar!
Tell me how!
Click on this friendly-looking button to download a seven-page PDF that takes you through the steps, complete with screenshots, and provides links to additional resources.
But I’m on a Mac
You can also do quite a lot of customising. I don’t use a Mac so I’m not going to try to guide you through it, but take a look at the download, and search for YouTube videos and Microsoft help pages using the terms you read about.
