How to Customize the Ribbon in MS Excel

You customize the Ribbon in the Customize Ribbon tab of the Excel Options dialog box . The quickest way to display this dialog box is to right-click anywhere in the Ribbon and choose Customize the Ribbon.

Customizing the Ribbon is very similar to customizing the Quick Access toolbar, the only difference is that you need to decide where to put the command within the Ribbon. Here’s the general procedure:

1. Right-click any part of the Ribbon, and choose Customize the Ribbon. Excel displays the Customize Ribbon tab of the Excel Options dialog box.
2. Use the drop-down list on the left (labeled Choose Command From) to display various groups of commands.
3. Locate the command you want in the list box on the left and select it.
4. Use the drop-down list on the right (labeled Customize the Ribbon) to choose a group of tabs. Main Tabs refers to the tabs that are always visible; Tool Tabs refers to the context tabs that appear when a particular object is selected.
5. In the list box on the right, select the tab and the group where you want to put the command. You must click the “plus sign” controls to expand the hierarchical lists. Remember that you cannot add commands to built-in groups, so you may need to use the New Tab or New Group buttons to add a tab or group.
6. Click the Add button to add the selected command from the left to the group on the right.

When you are finished making your Ribbon changes, click OK to close the Excel Options dialog box. New tabs and groups are given generic names, so you’ll probably want to give them more meaningful names. Use the Rename button to rename the selected tab or group. You can also rename built-in tabs and groups. Although you cannot remove a built-in tab, you can hide the tab by unchecking the check box next to its name.

Figure above shows a part of a customized Ribbon. In this case, I added a group to the View tab. The new Text To Speech group has five commands. I inserted this new group between the Zoom and the Window groups.