Build your own Office

At the bottom of each group is the title and, to the right, a small icon that looks like an arrow pointing out of a box.

Left-click on this to open the full options for that group. These windows are little changed from previous versions of Office.

The Insert tab is used for inserting anything not found on the keyboard into a document, whether it is a letter with an accent, a picture or some clipart.

Headers and Footers can also be accessed from this tab. The Page Layout tab is used to set the margins and backgrounds for documents, while References has tools for creating an index and table of contents, both of which are really handy for presentations or academic work.

The Mailing tab brings together the tools for creating mail merges, when several documents are created from a template changing details, such as name and address. Word processors provide some handy tools to make sure your document contains no errors and you’ll find these under the Review tab. Finally, View can be used to change the way the document is displayed.

Your Ribbon, your way
The Ribbon may not be customisable in the way Office 2003’s toolbars were, but there are ways to make it fit with how you work. For many people, the biggest problem with the Ribbon is the amount of space it takes up on screen, but this is easy to fix.

The Ribbon can be minimised so that only the tab headings are visible by double-clicking on one of the headings. Left-click on a tab to reveal its icons, then click in the body of the document to hide the Ribbon again. Using the Ribbon in this way is very similar to using menus. This option can also be chosen using the dropdown menu in the Quick Access Toolbar. Left-click on the down arrow to the right of the toolbar and select ‘Minimize the Ribbon’.

Extra icons you can’t do without are easy to add to the Quick Access Toolbar. Left-click on the down arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar to find extra icons that can be added, or click on the More Commands option to choose less popular ones. See this step-by-step walkthrough for more information.

Missing the mouse
Keyboard shortcuts are still very much a part of Office, and they’re now even easier to use. Just as it was possible to open a menu by pressing the Alt key and then the letter underlined in the menu name, the Alt key opens up the Ribbon without having to reach for the mouse. As soon as the Alt key is pressed, labels appear that show the required key for each tab.