How do I keep the ribbon always visible?

Anonymous
2011-03-16T22:54:08+00:00

When I am in a Word doc and want to, e.g., change the font, I have to click on Home, then font size.  Afterwards, the ribbon disappears.  If I want to do any other formatting, I again have to click on Home, etc.

When I first started using Word in 2010 Starter, the ribbon was always visible; I would like that again.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2011-03-17T00:38:03+00:00

The ribbon is "minimized". There are three ways to "unminimize" it:

  • Press Ctrl+F1 (this is an on/off toggle).
  • Double-click any of the tabs (Home, View, etc.).
  • Right-click any of the tabs or the Quick Access Toolbar and uncheck "Minimize the ribbon". Edit: In Office 2013, there's an additional way. The icon (shown below by the red box) in the top right corner of the window has a dropdown menu. Click Show Tabs and Commands to see the full ribbon. The Auto-hide Ribbon choice is new -- it hides both the tabs and the buttons to give you the most reading/editing space for the document. To show the ribbon temporarily, click once at the top of the window. As soon as you click a button on the ribbon, it will hide again. To turn this off, click the icon and click one of the other two choices.

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2012-03-27T20:23:12+00:00

If you expand the ribbon by any of the methods I listed above, it should stay expanded until you do the reverse of one of those methods. The state should stay unchanged even if you shut down and restart Word or Windows.

If that isn't happening for you, there are a couple of possibilities: There may be an add-in that's improperly changing the ribbon's visibility, or there may be a problem in the registry that prevents the ribbon's state from being saved. Neither of these is very likely.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-14T23:06:11+00:00

    Thank you so much for your help. This was doing my head in cause I couldnt find anywhere to fix this but your step by step instructions helped me and Im grateful for this

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-20T02:50:11+00:00

    There is at least two more options that I know of:

    1. You can minimize the ribbon by clicking the carat symbol just to the left of the help button (the question mark). The carat symbol looks like this: ^ and the help button is the question mark at the top right side of the ribbon. While the ribbon is minimized, that carat symbol will by upside down and clicking on that symbol will maximize the ribbon.
    2. If you double-click the active ribbon tab to minimize the ribbon, and if you then click the same ribbon tab again, the ribbon will maximize and the carat symbol will change to a push-pin. Then when you either click on a ribbon command or when you click back into the document, the ribbon will minimize. This is good for people who want the ribbon minimized while they are working in a document and who only want to see the ribbon when they need it. It is not good for people who don't know about this feature and accidentally get into the push-pin mode. All they know is that they can activate the ribbon, but it soon disappears.

    wfj2

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-02-16T23:37:15+00:00

    Thank you for your quick fix for an annoying problem -- I edit manuscripts and boy do I want that ribbon showing! The double-click worked great.

    Thanks you...joe(phl)

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