The Ribbon

Quick reference

• 00:03 Before we can really get off the ground and start running with Excel well it really helps if we have some understanding of what the real basics are
• 00:11 of the program itself. Like how do we interact with it? What is it trying to tell us?
• 00:17 So for this video what we are going to do is we're going to go through and we're going to take a look at where the bulk
• 00:21 of the actual controls inside Excel are done: The Ribbon.
• 00:26 The Ribbon is the name that's given to the set of commands that hold the user interface for Excel. So it's this entire area at the
• 00:33 top of the screen that holds all these funky looking buttons and different pieces that we can use to interact with the program.
• 00:39 It's made up of a few main areas. Up in the very very top left
• 00:44 running across the top of the screen here we have what's called the quick access tool bar or the QAT.
• 00:49 And this has got the commands that Microsoft felt that you would need the most frequently
• 00:54 right here with one click access. You can also, if
• 00:58 you click the little drop down button here, customize the quick access toolbar
• 01:01 to add a few different commands that you may want. Say you wanted the file open command
• 01:06 or you wanted to have the print preview and print button so that you could actually click on this
• 01:11 and go directly in to see what your print job might look like.
• 01:15 Now,
• 01:16 the other things that happen on this particular area, you've got the quick access toolbar
• 01:20 and then you've got the main Ribbon itself. And the Ribbon is made up of
• 01:24 a few different elements. We have Tabs, Tabs hold the entire set of commands here. So we have a Home Tab,
• 01:31 an Insert Tab, Page Layout, Formulas and so on.
• 01:36 Inside each Tab we also have groups of commands and
• 01:40 you can identify a group because it's actually got a name at the bottom. So this is the
• 01:44 Clipboard group and the Font group and you can see they are separated by these bars that keep the commands,
• 01:49 similar commands grouped together so the Alignment and Number group, Styles group.
• 01:54 Within each group exists a variety of controls. The controls consist of things like buttons that might change certain element
• 02:03 features. They might have a split button or a drop down control that actually allows you to get into, this is called a
• 02:09 gallery. Galleries are very visual. We've got Cell Styles also gives a different kind of gallery.
• 02:15 We've got Menus that are in here as well.
• 02:18 Regardless of what they are as you work your way through these courses you'll hear of
• 02:22 different commands that ask you to go and click on this menu or click on this drop down
• 02:25 button and whatnot. So basically the gist is that you have to figure out, and we will tell you, which tab you're going to,
• 02:33 which group you are going to and which command it is that you are actually looking for.
• 02:38 Now the other thing that's not as intuitive inside the Ribbon is that in the bottom
• 02:43 right hand corner of some of these groups is this tiny little box with an arrow on it.
• 02:47 This is actually very important this is called a Dialog Box launcher
• 02:51 and this actually holds, well we can see the Alignment group holds a few different controls.
• 02:57 The Dialog Box launcher will launch us into a whole bunch
• 03:01 more advanced settings that actually go with these particular areas.
• 03:05 So this is something that if you see a dialog box launcher or you are directed
• 03:08 to click on the dialog box launcher this is the icon that you're looking for.
• 03:12 You'll notice that many of the groups have them but not all of them, Styles doesn't and
• 03:17 Cells doesn't. So it's not necessarily indicative that its going to be there every single
• 03:21 time but when it is it'll actually allow you to get into some more powerful controls a little bit later on.
• 03:27 The other thing that's important to know about the Ribbon is that you can navigate the entire thing using keyboard shortcuts.
• 03:34 If you press your Alt key you'll notice that right away it pops up with little letters
• 03:39 on top of everything. So if I were to press M right now, I'll press
• 03:44 M it gives me a whole bunch of different commands and what it's done is activated the Formulas tab
• 03:50 and it's given me all of the individual commands that I can use here as well.
• 03:54 So if I wanted to for instance get into the Name Manager I could press N
• 03:58 and it would open up the Name Manager dialog. Then I could close this as well so if i want to go back to the Home Tab press Alt
• 04:07 H and go back to the Home Tab. If I press Escape and Escape again it will actually dismiss all of those commands.
• 04:15 The last thing that's important to know about the Ribbon is that it uses what's called adaptive technology to actually
• 04:22 shrink things down when your screen gets a little bit too narrow.
• 04:26 So if you're working on a tablet, you're working you start shrinking down the size
• 04:30 of Excel, you'll watch that the Ribbon Interface will start to change. And this can be a little confusing
• 04:34 if your tutorials have been recorded in one resolution and
• 04:38 you're using a smaller one you may not be able to see the command you're looking for.
• 04:42 I can demonstrate this by shrinking my Excel window.
• 04:46 Watch what happens to the commands in the cells group as I actually shrink this window down.
• 04:51 There we go, there they go. They've changed. We still have the Insert, Delete and
• 04:55 Format and if I widen this back up you'll see that they are still there: Insert, Delete Format.
• 04:59 But instead of being menus that are contained under these big buttons, the Ribbon can actually
• 05:05 shrink down to give you a little bit more space and it turns them into a slightly different style of menu.
• 05:10 So this can be challenging, especially if you start really shrinking it down we can get into some
• 05:15 really ugly looking things that have a whole bunch of commands buried in them,
• 05:19 but might not be obvious. So if you are working through these tutorials and you don't see the buttons but you see smaller versions of them
• 05:26 don't panic you haven't done anything wrong at all. It's just the Ribbon trying to mess with your mind.

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