Removing buttons from the Quick Access toolbar

Want to remove a command from the Quick Access toolbar? It’s easy:

Point to the unwanted button on the Quick Access toolbar and right-click.

Choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar from the pop-up menu (see Figure 2-15).

Voilà! It’s gone.

Because the button remains on the tab where it originally lived, it’s not lost — it’s just not taking up space at the top of the Access workspace.

Be careful not to remove the default buttons — Save, Undo, and Redo. Why? Because they’re used so often that it’s silly to remove them from such a great location. If you do remove them, you’ll have to use the Quick Access menu button and select them from that menu when you want to use them. That’s two steps (opening the menu and making a selection) instead of one, and who wants to increase steps by 100 percent? Not me!

Minimizing the Ribbon

Need more elbow room? If you need to spread out and want more workspace, you can make the Ribbon smaller, reducing it to just a strip of the tab titles (whichever tabs are in place at the time you choose to minimize the Ribbon). When it’s minimized, you can bring it back to full size with minimum fuss.

Figure 2-15: Reconsidering that added button? No problem. Say byebye with a simple right-click.

To minimize the Ribbon, follow these steps:

1. Right-click anywhere on the Ribbon.

A pop-up menu appears. Note that you can click on a button, a Ribbon tab, or a section name (such as “Reports” on the Create tab, or “Font” on the Home tab) and the appropriate pop-up menu will appear.

2. Choose Collapse the Ribbon.

The Ribbon is reduced to a long bar with just the tab titles on it, as shown in Figure 2-16.

3. To bring the Ribbon back to its full glory, right-click the reduced Ribbon and then choose Collapse the Ribbon.

Note that the command is now checked (as also shown in Figure 2-16), indicating that the Ribbon is currently minimized. Performing this step — reselecting the command — toggles this setting off, and the Ribbon returns to full size.

Figure 2-16: The Ribbon, minimized.

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