The Ribbon
Ribbon Contents
The Ribbon
The Ribbon in PowerPoint Online is the long strip comprising tabs with buttons across the top of the main window within the PowerPoint interface. The Ribbon contains almost all the commands you need to work with your slides and is designed in a way that helps you quickly find the commands that you need to complete a task.
However, the File Menu exists in PowerPoint Online, even though it sports fewer options. All the other
commands are now found in the various tabs of the Ribbon within the interface. The Ribbon has several tabs, each named as you
can see in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Ribbon and tabs within the PowerPoint Online interface
Tip: If you want more screen estate for a while, you can quickly hide the entire Ribbon while still showing just the tabs
by double-clicking any of the visible tabs.
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Ribbon Content
The Ribbon contains many interface elements that are explained below:
- Tabs: The Ribbon contains fixed tabs such as Home, Insert, Design, etc.
Each tab contains sets of tools to create and edit slides.
- Contextual Tabs: These are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time. They only make an appearance
when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options. Notice the Drawing Tools Format
tab (highlighted in red within Figure 2). Tis is a contextual tab. Make sure
that you click on the contextual tab to activate it.
Figure 2: Contextual tab
- Group: A group of related tools within a tab is known as a Group. Figure 3 shows Insert Shapes and Shape Styles groups within the Drawing Tools Format tab.
Figure 3: Shape Styles group
- A Gallery is a collection of styles or properties. Most galleries can be seen as drop-down galleries as shown in
Figure 4. To access the drop-down galleries, you click the More button (explained in the next point).
Figure 4 shows the Shape Styles gallery. All available styles can be seen as small preview thumbnails.
Figure 4: Shape Styles Gallery
- The More button expands to a gallery within a Ribbon tab so that all or more options can be seen.
Figure 5 shows you the More button for the Shape Styles gallery (highlighted in
red).
Figure 5: More button
- The Down Arrow is a small downward pointing triangle that's placed next to many buttons. When clicked, this displays a
gallery or an additional options/sub-menu related to the selected button. You can see the Down Arrow (highlighted in
red) next to the Shape Fill option in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Down Arrow
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