Microsoft Word for Writers: Setting Up the Menu

Hi Folks,

There are several items available for use in the Word menu (also called the Ribbon), and most of us use the Ribbon as-is out of the box. However, just in case you want to customize it, here are some brief instructions.

In this screenshot, the Ribbon is the horizontal white area that includes the menu tabs: File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, Review, and View. Other tabs are available (see Figure 5), but these are the only ones I use. The horizontal gray area just below the Ribbon is the Quick Access Toolbar.

1_800Figure 1

To set up the menu, place your cursor to the right side of the small down arrow on the Quick Access Toolbar and right click. This small drop-down menu will appear:

2Figure 2

When you click Customize the Ribbon, this dialogue box will open:

3_750Figure 3

You can see that Popular Commands are listed in the left pane and Main Tabs are listed in the right pane. To familiarize yourself with the Customize the Ribbon dialogue box, click the arrow to the right of Popular Commands. You’ll see another drop-down menu that looks like this:

4Figure 4

I recommend choosing from All Commands, but it’s less important in setting up the Ribbon (menu) than a bit later in setting up the Quick Access Toolbar. You’ll see a similar but much more extensive menu in that section a bit later. More important right now is the Main Tabs pane on the right. You can see my settings.

5Figure 5

Furthermore, you can click the little plus symbol in front of each checked item to add or remove menu items from that tab. For example, if you click the plus symbol before Home, you’ll probably see Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles and Editing. In mine, I removed Styles because I don’t want the menu cluttered with them.

When I click my Home tab, it looks like this:

6Figure 6

If you intend to use Styles though, certainly you should leave them in place. You can easily customize the other tabs in the same way. Whatever you select during this process is what will appear in your Ribbon when you click a tabbed menu item. I encourage you to explore, but I also caution you not to delete a submenu item unless you’re certain you aren’t going to use it.

To add or remove tabs from the menu, simply check or uncheck the box that appears before each tabbed menu item (see Figure 5).

To remove a submenu item, click the plus symbol in front of the tabbed menu item. When the submenu items appear below it, click the submenu item you would like to remove. If Word will allow you to remove the item, the Remove button in the center of the Customize the Ribbon dialogue box will be illuminated. If not, it will be grayed-out (see Figure 3).

To add a submenu item, select the item from the left pane of the Customize the Ribbon dialogue box and click the Add button in the center. (There might be some further requirements. If so, Word will provide pop-up instructions.)

Until later, happy writing!

Harvey

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