The Ribbon: Word

The Office 2007 changed the look of Office. Instead of drop down menus, a ribbon appeared along the top of the screen.

This has been the menu system since. This is the 2013 ribbon. 

The ribbon has tabs at the top. The Home tab is the default tab. That means when you start the program that is the tab that you are seeing. 

Each ribbon tab is divided into sections. The Home tab has five sections. The name of the sections are at the bottom of the ribbon in the middle of the section. The first section is Clipboard, then Font, Paragraph, Style and Editing.

Note: Clicking on the name of the section does not do anything. The name helps with describing where on the ribbon an icon is located. In training manuals they will tell you something like the following. 

"Click on the B in the Font section of the Home tab."

Click on the word INSERT on the ribbon. It is a tab and therefore a new ribbon appears. Insert is now the ribbon you are looking at. Note the sections and the names of the sections.

Continue to click through the words at the top to view each of the tabs except the first one.

File Tab
Note the File Tab is the first tab on the ribbon. It has a colored background. When you click on the File tab you go into what is called Backstage Mode [2010 & 2013]. You can no longer see the document but are able to change settings and other options from here.

The 2010 version had a curtain in the bottom right corner of the screen but they removed it for the 2013 version.

There are two ways to exit out of the File menu [backstage mode]

1. Click on the left arrow in the top left corner of the screen. It has a circle around it.

2. Press the ESC [Escape] key.

To learn more about the ESC go to the ESCape post