Understanding Ribbon in Excel (Tabs and Options)

In Excel, the ribbon is like a header at the top of the Excel window. It has tabs where all the options are categorized. Each tab has a group of options. You can use each option direct from the ribbon using the buttons, or input bar to change the values (like font).

And if you want to see all the options for a particular group, you can click on the small downward arrow from the bottom right.

In this tutorial, we will learn about the multiple tabs, icons, groups, and the various options with their functionalities.

Excel Ribbon Tabs

In Excel, the ribbon has the below tabs:

1. File Tab

It gives you a backstage view of all important commands and options that are related to the files. It includes how to create a new worksheet, open a file, and save and print the files.

2. Home Tab

The Home tab is the default tab in Excel. It has the most frequently used options which have different groups like a clipboard, font, alignment, number, styles, cells, and editing.

As, in the clipboard group, the cut, copy and paste commands are available. There is a font group that includes multiple formatting, font styles, colors, and sizes.

3. Insert Tab

It helps you to insert different objects like pivot tables, images, charts, shapes, hyperlinks, headers and footers, and special symbols in the sheet.

It allows you to insert the text box for adding the text and customize it by changing its outline and color.

4. Page Layout Tab

This tab helps you to customize the layout by adjusting the margins of the page to print it out.. It gives you access to select the orientation portrait and landscape.

The page layout tab provides you the option to remove the gridlines from the worksheet by unselecting the view gridlines option.

5. Formula Tab

The Formula tab helps you in working with formulas and functions which are in the group of function library.

Use the auto-sum function to sum, average, and count the values and to find out the minimum or maximum value among the selected ones. The defined names group helps you to create a named range.

6. Data Tab

The data tab has all the options that allow you to clean and manage data. From here, you can access a power query that helps you to clean the data. Even it allows you to sort and filter your data.

7. Review Tab

This allows you to spell check, translate the language, adding comments and notes to the worksheet.

In the workbook statistics dialog box, you will get all the details of the current sheet and workbook about the cells with data, the number of sheets, and the formulas that are used in it.

8. View Tab

It provides you with several options to change the view from the workbook views- Page Break Preview, Normal view, and Page Layout view. It allows you to hide or unhide the Formula bar, and Headings from the worksheet.

With the freeze panes option, you can freeze the selected rows and columns.

Activate or Deactivate a Tab from the Ribbon

There are a few tabs that are not active on the ribbon by default, like, the draw and developer tabs. And if you want to activate any of these, you can do it by using the customize option. Below are the steps.

• First, right-click on the ribbon and select the customize the ribbon option.

• Now, the Excel options dialog box appears.

• From there, you can add any tab by selecting the check-in box under the main tabs menu.

• In the end, click on Ok and this tab will appear on the ribbon.

If you want to remove any tab from the ribbon, for this just you can deselect the check-in box of that tab.

Hide or Unhide the Ribbon in Excel

To expand the space of your worksheet, you can hide the ribbon from above.

• Right-click on the ribbon and select the Collapse ribbon button to hide it.

• Now, you’ll see the tabs only on the top of the window.

• To get it back again, right-click on the menu bar and unselect the collapse ribbon button.

The shortcut keys to hide or unhide the ribbon from the computer are CTRL+F1 or in the case of laptop users press CTRL + Fn + F1.