Customize Excel ribbon with your own tabs, groups or commands

What you can customize

To save your time and efforts when working on different tasks in Excel, you can personalize the ribbon with things like:

• Show, hide, and rename tabs.
• Rearrange tabs, groups and custom commands in the order you want.
• Create a new tab with your own commands.
• Add and remove groups on existing tabs.
• Export or import your personalized ribbon.

What you can't customize

Though a lot of ribbon customizations are allowed in Excel, certain things cannot be changed:

• You can neither change nor remove the built-in commands, including their names, icons and order.
• You cannot resize the ribbon, nor can you change the size of the text or the default icons. However, you can hide the ribbon completely or collapse it to show only the tab names.
• You cannot change the color of the ribbon in Excel, but you can change the color scheme of the entire Office.

How to create a new tab for the ribbon

To make your favorite commands easily accessible, you can add your own tab to the Excel ribbon. Here's how:

1. In the Customize the Ribbon window, under the list of tabs, click the New Tab button.

   This adds a custom tab with a custom group because commands can only be added to custom groups.

2. Select the newly created tab, named New Tab (Custom), and click the Rename… button to give your tab an appropriate name. In the same manner, change the default name given by Excel to a custom group. For the detailed guidelines, please see how to rename ribbon items.
3. When done, click OK to save the changes.

As shown in the screenshot below, our custom tab is added to the Excel ribbon immediately, though the custom group is not displayed because it is empty. For the group to show up, it must contain at least one command. We will add commands to our custom tab in a moment but, to be consistent, we will first look at how to create a custom group.

How to add a custom group to a ribbon tab

To add a new group to either a default or custom tab, this is what you need to do:

1. In the right part of the Customize the Ribbon window, select the tab to which you'd like to add a new group.
2. Click the New Group button. This adds a custom group, named New Group (Custom), at the bottom of the list of groups, meaning the group displays on the far-right end of the tab. To create a new group in a specific location, select the group after which the new group is to appear.

   In this example, we're going to add a custom group to the end of the Home tab, so we select it, and click New Group:

3. To rename your custom group, select it, click the Rename… button, type the desired name, and click OK.

   Optionally, from the Symbol box, select the icon to represent your custom group. This icon will appear on the ribbon when the Excel window is too narrow to show the commands, so only the group names and icons are displayed. Please see how to rename items on the ribbon for full details.

4. Click OK to save and view your changes.

How to add a command button to Excel ribbon

Commands can only be added to custom groups. So, before adding a command, be sure to create a custom group on an inbuilt or custom tab first, and then perform the below steps.

1. In the list under Customize the Ribbon, select the target custom group.
2. In the Choose commands from drop-down list on the left, select the list from which you want to add commands, for example, Popular Commands or Commands Not in the Ribbon.
3. In the list of commands on the left, click the command you want to add.
4. Click the Add button.
5. Click OK to save the changes.

As an example, we are adding add the Subscript and Superscript buttons to the custom tab that we created:

As the result, we now have a custom ribbon tab with two buttons:

Show icons instead of text labels on the ribbon

If you're using a small monitor or a laptop with a small screen, every inch of screen space matters. To save some room on the Excel ribbon, you can remove text labels from your custom commands to show only icons. Here's how:

1. In the right part of the Customize the Ribbon window, right-click on a target custom group and select Hide Command Labels from the context menu.
2. Click OK to save the changes.
   

Rename ribbon tabs, groups and commands

In addition to giving your own names to custom tabs and groups that you create, Excel allows you to rename the built-in tabs and groups. However, you cannot change names of the inbuilt commands, only commands added to custom groups can be renamed.

To rename a tab, group or custom command, carry out these steps:

1. On the right side of the Customize the Ribbon window, click on the item you want to rename.
2. Click the Rename button below the list if tabs.
3. In the Display name box, type the name you want, and click OK.
4. Click OK to close the Excel Options window and view your changes.

For groups and commands, you can also select an icon from the Symbol box, like shown in the screenshot below:

Move tabs, groups and commands on the ribbon

To know exactly where everything is located on your Excel ribbon, you can put tabs and groups in the most convenient places. However, the build-in commands cannot be moved, you can only change order of commands in custom groups.

To rearrange items on the ribbon, this is what you need to do:

1. In the list under Customize the Ribbon, click on the tab, group, or command in a custom group that you wish to move.
2. Click the Up or Down arrow to move the selected item left or right on the ribbon, respectively.
3. When the desired order is set, click OK to save the changes.

The screenshot below shows how to move a custom tab to the left end of the ribbon.

Remove groups, custom tabs and commands

While you can remove both default and custom groups, only custom tabs and custom commands can be removed. The build-in tabs can be hidden; built-in commands can nether be removed nor hidden.

To remove a group, a custom tab or command, do the following:

1. In the list under Customize the Ribbon, select the item to be removed.
2. Click the Remove button.
3. Click OK to save the changes.

For example, this is how we remove a custom command from the ribbon:

Hide and show tabs on the ribbon

If you feel the ribbon contains a couple of extra tabs that you never use, you can easily hide them from view.

• To hide a ribbon tab, simply uncheck its box in the list of tabs under Customize the Ribbon, and then click OK.
• To show a ribbon tab, select the box next to it, and click OK.

For instance, that's how you can show the Developer tab, which is not visible in Excel by default:

Customize contextual tabs on Excel ribbon

To personalize the contextual ribbon tabs that appear when you select a certain item such as a table, chart, graphic or shape, select Tool Tabs from the Customize the Ribbon drop-down list. This will display the full list of context-sensitive tabs available in Excel letting you hide, show, rename, and rearrange these tabs as well as add your own buttons to them.