OH MY WORD! Make it work EXACTLY how you want

What you need: Microsoft Word (2010 or later); Any version of Windows (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes

Office programs contain tabs on the Ribbon – Home, Insert, Design, and so on. Each of these have groups of customisation options. In most tabs, you’ll usually only use one or two of these options. For example, you may only use the font-formatting options in the Home tab or the Hyperlink option in the Insert tab. To make tabs more useful you should create your own one containing your favourite options. Here’s how to do it in Word.

STEP1

New customised tabs can only be added in Microsoft Office 2010, 2013 and 2016. If you’re not sure which version you have, click the File tab at the top left, then Office Account (or Account 1 ). In the Product Information section 2 , you’ll see your Office version 3 . We’ll show you how to create a new tab using Word 2013, but the process is the same in 2010 and 2016 versions. You can use the same process to create tabs in Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook.

STEP2

First, click the File tab 1 , then Options at the bottom. In the Word Options window that opens, click Customize Ribbon 2 . Here, you’ll see two columns with dropdown menus. The left column 3 lets you select options within Word’s main tabs. The right column 4 displays all your tabs (all are ticked by default). If you don’t want to see a particular tab on your Ribbon, untick it 5 .

STEP3

Click the New Tab button 1 , and a new tab 2 and a new group 3 will be created. Rename your tab by clicking ‘New Tab (Custom)’, clicking Rename 4 , renaming it (we called ours Favourites 5 ), then clicking OK. Likewise, to rename your group, select ‘New Group (Custom)’, click Rename, name it (we called ours Formatting), then click OK.

STEP4

Now we’ll add options to our Formatting group. First, select the group you created (Formatting 1 ). Next, click the left-hand column dropdown menu and choose one of the options (from Popular Commands, All Commands or commands from the ‘File tab’ and ‘All tab’). Choose Popular Commands 2 for now. Now select Font 3 , then click Add 4 to add this to your Formatting group. Click Remove 5 to remove any option you mistakenly add.

STEP5

Add other options to your Formatting group by selecting them in the left column 1 , then clicking Add 2 (we added Font Color, Font Size, Format Painter and Grow Font). By default, these options appear in your group in the order they were added (items at the top appear on the left of your tab). To rearrange these, select an option 3 , then click the up or down arrow 4 to move it.

STEP6

To see how your tab is shaping up, click OK at the bottom right of the Word Options window, then click your newly created Favourites tab 1 (you’ll see the options you added at the top left 2 ). To add more groups, click the small dropdown menu at the top left 3 , More Commands, Customize Ribbon on the left, select your new tab 4 , then click New Group 5 , Rename 6 , rename it and click OK (we called this group Other Options).

STEP7

Now select this new group (Other Options) 1 , then click the left-hand column dropdown menu and select All Tabs 2 . You can now add any of the options in the left-hand column. For example, click the dropdown menu beside Insert 3 , then beside Illustrations 4 and you’ll see several options (including Pictures and Online Pictures) that you can add directly to your Other Options group. Some options (such as Shapes and Screenshot 5 ) have dropdown menus of their own.

STEP8

Click Screenshot 1 to reveal a Screen Clipping option 2 . Screenshot captures your entire screen, whereas Screen Clipping lets you click and drag to select a specific area of your screen. If you add Screenshot to your new group, Screen Clipping will appear in a dropdown menu. If you only want Screen Clipping, click to select it, then add it to your group 3 .

STEP9

You can reposition groups within your tab by selecting the group 1 , then clicking the up or down arrows 2 . Similarly, reposition your new tab within your Ribbon by selecting it 3 , then clicking the up or down arrows. Finally, click OK at the bottom to apply the changes.

STEP 10

Office lets you export your Ribbon changes to other PCS. First, insert a USB stick into your PC. Return to the Word Options window (see Step 3), click Import/ Export 1 , ‘Export all customizations’ 2 and save this file to your USB stick. Insert this USB stick into your second PC, open Word (has to be the same version) on your second PC, go to the Word Options window, click the Import/export button, click ‘Import customization file’ 3 , point to the saved file on your USB stick, then follow the prompts to import your Ribbon changes. ●