Where’d My Ribbon Go?

Sometimes, when people get impatient with their software, they get click-happy. You see the same impatient behaviour at elevators – the elevator car isn’t arriving quickly enough so they start banging on the elevator button. Like that’s going to make the elevator speed up and the doors open more quickly… Like with the elevator button, furiously clicking in the hope that action you desired the first time (that didn’t happen) will somehow magically happen with the second, third or fourth click is pointless. It won’t. What might occur though is behaviour you *weren’t* intending or expecting. (Luckily that’s not the case with elevator buttons)

In this example, that extra clicking can cause the Office Ribbon to go into hiding and leave you wondering where it ran off to.

The Office Ribbon (2007 and 2010) in all its icon-heavy glory looks like what you’re used to:

The Office Ribbon hidden looks like this, all shrunken and icon-less:

And if you wonder how yours got to looking that way, you likely did one of two things:

You either inadvertently clicked the Minimize Ribbon button (or pressed Ctrl F1)

You double-clicked on the active Ribbon Tab (headings), which has the same effect.

You get the Ribbon back by repeating those actions – they are toggles. Carrying them out hides the Ribbon. Carrying them out a second time displays the Ribbon.

Now that you know the consequences of your clicking, you can use it to your advantage to deliberately hide the Ribbon when you want the extra screen real estate – less noise, more space.

Oh, and stop pressing that elevator button. It’ll never listen.

Tags » Word

16 January 2012
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Where’d My Ribbon Go?

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