Customize the Ribbon

New in Excel 2010, or indeed in any of the Office 2010 applications, is that we can customize the ribbon a number of different ways. One way is in the “Backstage” view where when choosing “Options” the Excel Options window opens and you can choose the category “Customize Ribbon.”
A second and much quicker way is to right click on the ribbon, no matter where, and select “Customize the Ribbon” from the drop-down menu.
In both cases, this opens the following dialog.

On the left (a) we find all the commands that we can add to the “Ribbon”.
On the right side, we find the structure of the “Ribbon” (b), as it would look at that time. Here you can see all “Main Tabs” (1), the different groups (2) and the various “command” buttons (3).

To view the contents of a “Main Tab”, a group or command button, click the plus icon. To hide this information, click the minus icon (4).

What you should know and remember:

You cannot remove or hide a “Main Tab” on the “Ribbon”. You can only disable a “Main Tab” and this by clicking the checkbox beside the “Main Tab” (5).

Important to know is that you can only remove groups from “Main Tabs” if they are listed in bold and that you can delete/remove something from “Main Tabs” only when the “Remove” button (1) is highlighted. Command Tabs can be repositioned using the arrow button in the dialog box (2). And you can change the name of a “Main Tab”, by selecting the tab and clicking the “Rename” (3) button as shown below.

Now that we know how to hide a “Main Tab”, it’s a small effort to make our own tabs containing our own groups and command buttons. In this example, I will hide all the “Main Tabs” except for the “Start” Main Tab.

I click the “New Tab” button to add my new tab and name it “my tab”. How original! Next, I select the newly created tab in the list and click the button “New Group”. I name this group “my group”. Finally, I select this group, choose the command buttons that I want to add (can be found in the list on the left of the dialog box) and click the button “Add.

When I’m ready I click the OK button. Below image shows the result. you now have your own “Ribbon” with only two tabs (1), three command buttons in “My Tab” (2), and only one group, “my group” (3).

If you want the “Ribbon” to be changed back to the initial dafault values later, click the “Reset” button and select “Reset All Adjustments” from the drop-down menu.

Custom tabs, groups, and command buttons in a group can always be removed.

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