by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on
In this short tutorial, you will find 5 quick and easy ways to restore Excel ribbon in case it is missing and learn how to hide the ribbon to get more room for your worksheet.
Ribbon is the central point of whatever you do in Excel and the area where most of features and commands available to you reside. Do you feel the ribbon takes up too much of your screen space? No problem, one click of your mouse, and it is hidden. Want it back? Just another click!
If the ribbon has disappeared from your Excel UI, don't panic! You can quickly get it back by using one of the following techniques.
If the Excel ribbon is minimized so that only tab names are visible, do one of the following to get it back to a normal full display:
If the ribbon is hidden completely including the tab names, here's how you can restore it:
Similar methods can be used to hide ribbon in Excel, and the next section explains the details.
If the ribbon takes up too much space at the top of your worksheet, especially on a small screen laptop, you can collapse it to show only the tab names or hide the ribbon altogether.
To see only the tab names without commands like in the screenshot below, use any of the following techniques:
If you aim to have the largest amount of screen space for a workbook area, use the Auto-hide option to get Excel in kind of full screen mode:
This will totally hide the ribbon, including all tabs and commands.
Tip. To get a full-screen view of your worksheet, press Ctrl + Shift + F1. This will hide/unhide the ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar and the status bar at the bottom of the window.
If all of a sudden the ribbon disappears from your Excel, it's most likely to be one of the following cases.
Perhaps you have inadvertently hidden the ribbon with an errant keystroke or mouse click. To show all the commands again, click Ctrl + F1 or double-click any ribbon tab.
Most probably your Excel somehow got into a "full screen" mode. To restore the ribbon, click the Ribbon Display Options button at the top-right corner, and then click Show Tabs and Commands. This will lock the ribbon at the top of the Excel window where it belongs. For the detailed instructions, please see How to unhide ribbon in Excel.
If the Tool Tabs specific to a particular object (such as a chart, image, or PivotTable) are missing, that object has lost focus. For the contextual tabs to appear again, simply select the object.
You've been using some Excel add-in (e.g. our Ultimate Suite) for a while, and now the add-in's ribbon is gone. Chances are the add-in was disabled by Excel.
To fix this, click File > Excel Options > Add-ins > Disabled Items > Go. If the add-in is in the list, select it and click the Enable button.
That's how you hide and show ribbon in Excel. I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!
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