How to show, hide and restore missing ribbon in Excel

How to show ribbon in Excel

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.

Show collapsed ribbon in full view

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:

Press the ribbon shortcut Ctrl + F1.
Double-click on any ribbon tab to make the entire ribbon visible again.
Right-click any ribbon tab and clear the check mark next to Collapse the Ribbon in Excel 2019 - 2013 or Minimize the Ribbon in Excel 2010 and 2007.
Pin the ribbon. For this, click on any tab to temporarily view the ribbon. A small pin icon will appear at the lower right corner in Excel 2016 - 365 (the arrow in Excel 2013), and you click on it to always show the ribbon.

Unhide ribbon in Excel

If the ribbon is hidden completely including the tab names, here's how you can restore it:

To unhide the ribbon temporarily, click at the very top of your workbook.
To get the ribbon back permanently, click the Ribbon Display Options button in the top-right corner and choose the Show Tabs and Commands option. This will show the ribbon in the default full view with all the tabs and commands.

Similar methods can be used to hide ribbon in Excel, and the next section explains the details.

How to hide ribbon in Excel

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.

Minimize the ribbon

To see only the tab names without commands like in the screenshot below, use any of the following techniques: Excel ribbon hidden

Ribbon shortcut. The fastest way to hide Excel ribbon is to press Ctrl + F1.
Double-click a tab. The ribbon can also be collapsed by double-clicking an active tab.
Arrow button. Another quick way to hide the ribbon in Excel is to click the up arrow in the lower-right corner of the ribbon.
Pop-up menu. In Excel 2013, 2016, and 2019, right-click anywhere on the ribbon and select Collapse the Ribbon from the context menu. In Excel 2010 and 2007, this option is called Minimize the Ribbon.
Ribbon Display Options. Click the Ribbon Display Options icon at the top-right corner and choose Show Tabs.

Hide ribbon completely

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:

Click the Ribbon Display Options icon on the top-right corner of the Excel window, to the left of the Minimize icon.
Click Auto-hide Ribbon.

This will totally hide the ribbon, including all tabs and commands. Hide ribbon completely 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.

Excel ribbon missing – how to restore it

If all of a sudden the ribbon disappears from your Excel, it's most likely to be one of the following cases.

Tabs show up but commands disappeared

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.

Whole ribbon missing

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.

Contextual tabs disappeared

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.

Add-in's tab missing

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.

31 comments

evad says:
January 23, 2023 at 6:00 pm

I am sick and tired of trying to use the "new" version of excel which now has the clueless Ribbon crap

I go to Home to try and highlight a cell and lo and behold, Home disappears when I try to do that.

All due to this ribbon garbage. Ditto for how to freeze the keypad thanks fo Microsoft, you cannot do that without going into deep programming. How silly of these idiot programmers that they continue to load up MS and Excel and Word with useless stuff no one needs or wants. Just too much time on their hands.

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Abi says:
July 5, 2022 at 6:05 pm

Dear Svetlana,

Can't see "Analyze" on my ribbon and I have no idea how to bring on. Any assistance in this regard will be greatly appreciated

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Inisa says:
March 6, 2022 at 12:13 am

Thank you!

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Sajjad says:
February 15, 2022 at 1:13 pm

Very Helpful, thnk you.

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Nicholas Mureithi says:
January 4, 2022 at 8:53 am

kindly help, I am not in a position to use excel ribbons on the top of my laptop. everything looks disabled at all ribbons from the file ribbon all the way to view ribbon. sb help out

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Jeanine Bierman says:
November 18, 2021 at 4:33 pm

Please help on the. excel updated and now on the TOP left is an excel icon and save icon. how do I remove it. I already have a quick start icons. or even just the save icon

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- BA says:
  December 5, 2021 at 3:57 pm
  
  I have the same problem as Jeanine. I think this occurred because of a Microsoft update in November. If anyone knows of a way to undo this, please let me know. Thank you.
  
  Reply
  - BA says:
    December 13, 2021 at 12:03 am
    
    This seems to have fixed itself. Maybe via another Microsoft update.
    
    Reply
Bibi says:
August 26, 2021 at 1:12 am

Working in Google drive with excel. I must have touched something because it’s in full screen mood and my ribbon with save and do and redo is gone. I can’t save while inputting info. Help please.

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- Iftikhar Ahmad says:
  February 16, 2023 at 9:40 am
  
  Some ribbon in my excel working file are disabled and not working. But when i opeb online it works. Kindly support how to enable them.
  
  Reply
Sandy says:
August 4, 2021 at 10:12 pm

I’m on the verge of tears because something that used to be so simple for me no longer is. There is no ribbon icon on my sheet. I don’t have a keyboard that has any CTRL ALT etc buttons. All I want to do is change margins on an excel sheet but I can’t.

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Vicky says:
June 30, 2021 at 5:11 pm

I no longer have the option to PIN the toolbar in Excel, the PIN icon has disappeard? Therefore everytime I'm tryding to do something excel I have to reveal the toolbar everytime. Any suggestions, as this is driving me nuts!

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Sal says:
June 30, 2021 at 5:04 pm

Why when I pin the ribbon, most of the tools gone (it change to a simplistic mode)? I would like to have all my tools in the pinned ribbon.

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Eric F says:
June 26, 2021 at 5:51 pm

Hello, this was very helpful, thank you.
I'm using Excel for Mac 2021, and searching for help online is often difficult.

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Laurie says:
June 18, 2021 at 12:14 am

On my Excel sheet, the ribbon is over top of the first three rows on my sheet. Hiding them unless I collapse the ribbon.
How do I get the ribbon back above the first row?

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Doniyor Akramovich says:
April 2, 2021 at 1:52 am

Short key for hide and restore Auto-hide Ribbon
Ctrl+Shift+F1

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- Svetlana Cheusheva says:
  April 2, 2021 at 8:07 am
  
  Hello Doniyor,
  
  Ctrl + Shift + F1 hides /unhides not only the ribbon, but also Quick Access Toolbar and the status bar to give you a kind of full screen view of a sheet. To hide / unhide only the ribbon, use Ctrl + F1.
  
  Reply
  - KATHY THRASHER says:
    February 13, 2022 at 7:06 pm
    
    Thank you Svetlana - that's EXACTLY what I needed to know (Ctrl + F1)!
    
    Reply
Bushra R says:
March 13, 2021 at 8:23 pm

Thanks!!

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Bruno Castilho says:
January 6, 2021 at 10:53 am

Perfect

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june hashim says:
December 23, 2020 at 11:47 pm

Hi,
I don't know why suddenly I cannot drag cell using mouse because the "plus sign" is not functioning.
Please help to activate my plus sign.
Thank you

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Anthony Platt says:
October 15, 2020 at 3:56 pm

There is no option available to reinstore the ribbon on my oulook webmail, and I need it urgently to add a app specific password to fix a yahoo app. Please advise.

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mallika says:
July 29, 2020 at 4:04 am

thank u

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Charles says:
March 29, 2020 at 11:34 pm

Everything above the data will just disappear when a file has been opened for more than 20 minutes. It has been so frustrating. There has been no button at the upper right, and I've searched for so long to find the solution. Finally, the Cntl-F1 you mention here worked! Thank you!

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John says:
October 4, 2019 at 11:47 am

I was trying to get my spreadsheet to stay on the Home page. I clicked on "collapse ribbon" and my spreadsheet disappeared. I can see the spreadsheet file but I cannot open it. Could you please help ?

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Bharath says:
August 28, 2019 at 4:26 am

The add-in tab is appearing even after I uninstall the respective adding app.
I checked, no open key available in hkcu. The add-in is coming from excel15.xlb. I can't remove the .club file as it stores other user customisation data related to excel ribbon.
Kindly suggest.

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Debra says:
July 1, 2019 at 7:22 am

Could you please help. In Excel 2016 the ribbon and menu bar are missing, but the Ribbon Display Options icon is not available to restore them, only the minimize, maximize and close icon are displayed in the top right corner. Tried CTRL + F1 but not this has not worked. Thanks in advance for any help.

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- Fash says:
  March 24, 2020 at 8:27 pm
  
  You can use the VBA codes to hide the ribbon.?
  
  Reply
Faisal says:
June 22, 2019 at 7:24 am

Dear Svetlana
Could you please guide me about how to sum numbers greater than zero by the months. (i.e. if there are number of months and we have values in them but count the numbers which have value greater than zero in that month).
Regards
Faisal
Faisal.aziz26 @ gmail

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- Svetlana Cheusheva says:
  June 24, 2019 at 8:50 am
  
  Dear Faisal,
  
  You can use the SUMIFS or COUNTIFS function for this, depending on whether you want to add up all non-zero values for a specific month or just count the number of non-zero values for a given month.
  
  An exact formula will depend on how months are input in your data set (dates, numbers representing the months, or month names as text). If you can provide a small sample of your data and an expected result, I will try to help with the formula.
  
  Reply
Imran Masud says:
June 19, 2019 at 12:22 pm

Thanks svetlana.

Reply