Microsoft Office 2007: Working with the ribbon

The ribbon, shown below, is the primary form of navigation in the Microsoft Office 2007 system. Although the ribbon may seem unfamiliar at first, a few minutes working with it will reveal that the ribbon is an efficient way to navigate your favorite Office applications.

To understand the ribbon, it is important to recognize its three main components. The ribbon is comprised of the following three components:

Tabs - Core tasks you use in each program. Each Office 2007 application has different tabs for each application. The tabs for Word 2007 are highlighted below in orange.

Groups - Sets of related commands on the ribbon. For example, the font group contains all of the commands related to manipulating the size and style of fonts. The font group in Word 2007 is shown below and highlighted in orange.

Commands - Commands can be a button, menu, or textbox where information can be entered. The commands are the most basic component of the ribbon and usually do one specific function. The paste and bold commands in Word 2007 are shown below highlighted in orange.

In addition to the three components listed above, the ribbon also has other components that comprise it. These other components are more options and commands on demand.

More options are represented by a small icon in the lower right hand corner of groups on the ribbon. This button will typically open a dialogue box with options and commands that were not on the ribbon. The image below shows the more options button for the font group.

Commands on demand are additional tabs that show up on your ribbon when you need them. Examples of these are the picture tools, graph tools, and chart tools. These tools will only show up when working with the said item. For example, to access the picture tools, you must insert an image into the document. The picture tools will appear at the end of the tab list.

More information about the ribbon can be found on Microsoft's Office 2007 training page.