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About this lesson
Find and add menu items and buttons that you frequently use to your ribbon or quick access toolbar to give you faster access to the PowerPoint features you probably use the most.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Customizing the PowerPoint interface.pptx68.7 KB Customizing the PowerPoint interface - Complete.pptx
69.3 KB
Quick reference
Topic
Customizing the ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar to find and use hidden commands.
When to use
To change or customize the PowerPoint ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).
Instructions
Ribbon
- Either:
- Right click anywhere on the ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon, or
- On the ribbon, click the File tab, Options, and then click the Customize Ribbon tab.
- In the Choose commands from group, drop the arrow down and select All Commands.
- Browse to and select the item Accessibility Checker.
- In the Customize the Ribbon group, drop the arrow down and select Main Tabs, and then select the Home tab.
- Click the New Group button, and then click the Rename button.
- Rename the Display name to “My Items”. Select a Symbol from the list, and then click OK.
- With the My Items (Custom) tab selected, click the Add button.
- Click OK on the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
- On the ribbon, click the Home tab. The Accessibility Checker button will be visible within the My Items group.\
- Either:
- Right click anywhere on the ribbon and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar, or
- On the ribbon, click the File tab, Options, and then click the Quick Access Toolbar tab.
- In the Choose commands from group, drop the arrow down and select All Commands.
- Browse to and select the item Accessibility Checker.
- In the Customize Quick Access Toolbar group, drop the arrow down and select either:
- For all documents (default) to make the button available for all document you work on, or
- For [name of presentation] to make the button available in the current document only.
- Click the Add button.
- Click OK on the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
- The Accessibility Checker button will be visible on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Also note:
After an item is added to the ribbon or QAT, you may need to do further detective work to understand how the feature functions.
You can add any button on the ribbon quickly to the QAT: Right-click the button and select Add to the Quick Access Toolbar.
Login to download- 00:05 I have a very good friend who constantly builds presentations for people who are disabled and something that’s very important to her is the
- 00:11 accessibility checker and this video is all about customizing both the ribbon and the quick access toolbar, also known as the QAT, to bring
- 00:19 that feature to the forefront and the accessibility checker is available on file, check for issues, check accessibility. And we get this little area
- 00:28 pop up where we can look for particular problems on slides. So we’ll close that down, and we’ll place that on both the ribbon, which is
- 00:37 available here, and the quick access toolbar. Now briefly, your quick access toolbar may be indeed above the ribbon so let’s place it up
- 00:44 there, right click on the QAT, show quick access toolbar above the ribbon. That’s where it is by default. It’s a little bit further away from the
- 00:54 work that I’m doing on the slide than where I’d like it, so right click, show quick access toolbar or QAT below the ribbon, and there it is there.
- 01:03 So let’s customize the ribbon. You can right click on the ribbon, or indeed on the QAT as we saw, customize the ribbon, and we get the
- 01:11 PowerPoint options dialog box with this customize ribbon tab and we can customize the QAT here as well if we wish. So on this side we
- 01:19 have the area where we can choose commands from so I drop the little arrow down, commands not in the ribbon, and there is the accessibility
- 01:27 checker. Now a little bit of detective thinking makes me think ok, well that is indeed not available on the ribbon, and we saw that
- 01:35 because it was in the area called backstage, on the file tab and backstage is the subject of another video. I’d like to add that to the home
- 01:44 tab, which is one of the main tabs in PowerPoint, so I go add, now immediately I get a dialog box that says that there’s an error.
- 01:53 Commands need to be added to custom groups, so pick a tab then new group, ok. So I’m going to pick the home tab, new group, there is the
- 02:04 custom group; I see that I can rename that so I’ll call that items. And it seems like I should particularly select a symbol so I do that, click
- 02:13 ok, and there is our new custom group called items. I click add, with the accessibility checker option still selected. Now I’ll move this over a
- 02:25 little bit, keep an eye on the ribbon when I click ok, and there is indeed our new group on the ribbon. On the home tab it’s called items. And
- 02:33 there is the check accessibility feature. Now that’s very good because that is very big and bold and I can access that when I’m on the
- 02:41 home tab. However, when I go to the design tab or various other tabs, it disappears; it’s only available on the home tab. Now to place that on
- 02:51 the QAT it would always be available. Now the quick way, and we’re going to jump ahead right to the end of our video, would be to actually right
- 03:00 click on any feature in PowerPoint, add to quick access toolbar, but let’s do that the proper way, but at least you know that feature’s there. So
- 03:10 again, we can right click on the ribbon, or indeed on the QAT, customize the quick access toolbar, again we get the same dialog but a
- 03:19 different tab, choose commands from, let’s go commands not in the ribbon; now you and I know that the accessibility checker is in the
- 03:27 ribbon, but it’s not in the main part of the ribbon, it’s in a custom ribbon, so it still appears here, click add, to bring that across, for all documents
- 03:35 or indeed we could customize the QAT for a particular presentation, and I’d like you to keep your eye on the QAT. I click ok, and there it is,
- 03:45 click on that and we get out accessibility checker feature. So that’s a very simple way of customizing both the ribbon and the QAT to
- 03:54 allow us to bring a feature to the front that normally we would have to go through the back end of PowerPoint to find. So remember that
- 04:02 customizing both the ribbon and the QAT or the quick access toolbar is very simple, indeed some features may be located in particular parts of
- 04:10 the ribbon, and you may not know where they are, so explore and have a look around, but it’s really useful to be able to customize the ribbon,
- 04:18 look for commands that are not available and understand and explore how they work because it’s a very good feature, and remember also that
- 04:26 you can right click on any particular feature, add to QAT or quick access toolbar and there it is. Allows you to customize the ribbon and the QAT
- 04:35 so that you can build your presentations quickly and effectively.
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