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. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-08-13T21:29:02+00:00

    I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no way to completely disable the hiding of the ribbon. Microsoft would have to change the programming and recompile it to do that -- which they're clearly not willing to do.

    If you can, ask your company's IT staff to fix whatever is preventing Office on your computer from acting the way it was designed to work. The ribbon is supposed to hide only when you do something to make it hide, not "when it feels like it".

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  2. Charles Kenyon 171.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-08-14T15:45:51+00:00

    For what it is worth, the minimization feature of the Ribbon is no different in Word 2013 from what it was in Word 2007. This is not something that is happening automatically; it is something that you have done or are doing.

    Edit:

    I was mistaken about this. By the close X at the top see:

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  3. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-08-14T21:08:24+00:00

    There is a difference in Word 2013, though: there is an AutoHide setting. If that is enabled, it has to be turned off before you can keep the Ribbon visible.

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