The Ribbon

Quick reference

• 00:04 Before we can get off the ground and get running with Excel, we really need
• 00:08 to understand a little bit about the user interface and how it's laid out.
• 00:12 How do we interact with the program?
• 00:14 Where do we go to get things done?
• 00:17 So this video's focus is going to be on exactly that,
• 00:20 understanding the ribbon and where we actually find commands.
• 00:23 The ribbon is the great big section up the top here,
• 00:27 with all the colorful buttons and tabs and whatnot.
• 00:30 Now this is where all of our commands are generally stored, and
• 00:33 it's broken into a couple pieces.
• 00:35 In the very top left here,
• 00:37 we have a line of icons that's called the Quick Access Toolbar.
• 00:41 And the intent here is that Microsoft is giving you one-click access
• 00:46 to be able to get to the commands that you use the most.
• 00:49 The nice piece here is if you click this little icon,
• 00:51 we can actually customize the Quick Access Toolbar.
• 00:54 Maybe we wanna add the Print Preview and Print button.
• 00:57 This button will allow us to click and actually go in and
• 00:59 see a print preview before we actually print our worksheets off.
• 01:04 Or maybe we'd like to add something like the file Open command.
• 01:07 Or Quick Print,
• 01:09 that just prints directly without actually going and doing the preview first.
• 01:13 So there's quite a few different commands that we can actually get to
• 01:16 to put into the Quick Access Toolbar.
• 01:18 And if you want more complicated scenarios,
• 01:20 where you can get even more commands, you can go and click More Commands.
• 01:24 And go into an interface that will let you pull up virtually any command in Excel
• 01:28 to give you one-click access.
• 01:31 The next line down is what we call ribbon tabs.
• 01:34 And you can see that right now, we've selected the Home tab.
• 01:37 We could click on the Insert tab or the Page Layout tab.
• 01:41 And there's a whole bunch of different commands behind every
• 01:44 one of these buttons.
• 01:47 We have something called contextual tabs.
• 01:50 If you'll notice,
• 01:50 Table Tools design tab here is showing up because I'm inside an actual proper table.
• 01:56 If I click outside the table, that tab goes away.
• 01:59 When I click back inside the table, the Table Tool Design tab comes up and
• 02:02 gives me commands that are specific to an actual Excel table.
• 02:09 If I go back to the Home group tab here,
• 02:11 you'll see that the ribbon is actually divided into groups.
• 02:14 We have the Clipboard group, we've got the Font group that
• 02:17 contains all of the font commands, the Alignment group, Number group, and so on.
• 02:22 So each of these is designed in order to try and
• 02:25 collect common commands together in one place.
• 02:29 This is gonna help you actually find controls when you actually can go through
• 02:32 and navigate this through.
• 02:33 And say, I'm looking for how to align my text.
• 02:36 Well, it's on the Home tab, it's under Alignment.
• 02:38 So it's gonna be one of these buttons.
• 02:40 And when you mouse over it, you'll get some tool tip text that tells you exactly
• 02:44 what's going to happen when you actually click any one of these individual icons.
• 02:49 A little bit less discoverable,
• 02:51 though, is this icon that you sometimes see in the bottom right-hand corner.
• 02:56 This is called a dialog box launcher.
• 02:58 And when you click on that,
• 02:59 it will actually open a more advanced formatting section.
• 03:04 That allows you to go in and control things to a much more granular level than
• 03:07 what you see in the user interface directly.
• 03:10 So don't be afraid to click on those.
• 03:11 So say they give you access to more commands than you might see up front and
• 03:16 ready to go here.
• 03:20 As far as terminology goes, it's worth noticing that we have some icons on here.
• 03:24 We have some drop down boxes.
• 03:28 We've got things called galleries, so when I click on this,
• 03:31 it'll give me a dynamic flyout menu.
• 03:34 It'll give us a bunch of different items on these.
• 03:36 But if we go into Format as Table,
• 03:38 this is a full gallery of items that actually comes up there.
• 03:41 So it looks a little bit different.
• 03:43 Cell Styles is a gallery as well, all right?
• 03:46 So some different ways, it's a very rich user interface design model.
• 03:51 What's also interesting is that you can actually access any of these commands by
• 03:55 using the keyboard.
• 03:57 If you press your Alt key, you'll notice that you get these funky little icons or
• 04:01 letters than come up in different places here.
• 04:04 So, if I wanted to go right now, say to the Data tab, I would press A.
• 04:10 And when I go to the data tab by pressing A, it now says, all right, well,
• 04:14 what would you like to do from here?
• 04:16 So I could say, sort my table by pressing, let's see.
• 04:21 If we wanted to sort it in ascending order, we could press SA.
• 04:25 And it would actually sort my values in ascending order.
• 04:28 And as soon as it's finished the chain, it actually knocks off all those letters.
• 04:31 But again, pressing Alt will allow you to get in there.
• 04:35 And if you do that by accident, you can press Esc to make it go away.
• 04:39 The last thing I wanna show you about the ribbon is that it actually dynamically
• 04:42 resizes for you.
• 04:44 So, if we go and
• 04:45 click the Restore Down button, you'll notice that my ribbon changes here.
• 04:50 All the buttons have collapsed now.
• 04:53 And as I expand the width of Excel, you'll notice that those galleries and buttons,
• 04:57 they start popping out and getting a little bit bigger.
• 05:00 Now all the commands are still here, even when I collapse it all the way down.
• 05:04 It just might make them a little bit harder to find.
• 05:06 So here's the Alignment group, you can see the whole thing.
• 05:09 Here's our Number styles, you can see the whole thing, and our fonts as well.
• 05:13 So it's just something to be aware of.
• 05:15 If you see something that looks slightly different in the design that I'm using,
• 05:18 it's probably a screen resolution difference between the two of us.
• 05:22 Mine may have shrunk down, where yours may be more expanded, or vice versa.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.