Hmmm… I didn’t like the new Office 2007 Ribbon Toolbar at first because I was a slave to the old Office 2000, XP and 2003 menus. What is a Ribbon? It’s a toolbar with attitude! It’s basically one toolbar with several tabs along the top, and when you click on each tab there are very pretty image buttons and links “grouped” together to help you perform a task. And the whole reason why Microsoft went to the “visually stimulating” image Ribbon is because users in the past versions of Word couldn’t, or wouldn’t go out on a 4-day expedition through all their submenus.

Where’s Waldo? If you remember the little red and white striped shirt dude hiding among hundreds of other dudes then you’ll understand the challenge it is to adjust your mind from menus to the new image driven Ribbon at first, but I’m finding myself really liking and getting used to the ease of having almost everything before my eyes without digging too deep.

I don’t believe there’s a way to customize the Ribbon, that is unless you’re a “developer,” and I’m not going there yet; however you can show and add to it’s little buddy toolbar called the Quick Access Toolbar or “QAT.”

The QAT is a little black toolbar you can add your most often used buttons like print, open, close and my favorite Save As; and he sits a top, or below the Goliath Ribbon. To Customize this shy toolbar: Right click any Tab on the Ribbon>Customize Quick Access Toolbar (which is also accessible from the New “Office button.” That big Microsoft Logo Circle in the upper-left corner of Word - which basically replaced the “File” menu in older versions of Word. So Office Logo>Word Options>Customize), find Waldo or the myriads of commands available in the left window and double click to add them to the right, making them available on our little buddy toolbar QAT.

QAT shortcut - press the Alt key to see numbers next to each command on your QAT toolbar and then press the number to activate that command! Word will also show a corresponding letter next to each tab in the Ribbon i.e. “H” for Home tab after pressing Alt key, then within the Home tab other letters and numbers are displayed next to each command…

Free Ribbon “spiffy” bonus shortcut- to collapse the Ribbon double click any of its tabs or use shortcut key Ctrl+F1.
 

Kirt Kershaw is an authority on training Microsoft’s Office, his credentials are Certified as a Master Microsoft Office Specialist Instructor for Microsoft’s Office 2000, XP and 2003 (he’s listed on Certiport’s website), Microsoft’s Project XP certified, CompTIA’s A+ certified. In addition, he Participated in Certiport’s standard setting methodologies and procedures research project with Excel 2003 Expert exam materials.

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