IN THIS CHAPTER

Modifying toolbars and ribbon tabs to make them work for you

Increasing screen real estate when you need it

Customizing your keyboard shortcuts

Taking advantage of templates

Giving dark mode a try

You can customize Office for the Mac in many ways to make it suit your own needs. From toolbars to menus, you can easily put commands wherever they’re handiest for the way you work.

In this chapter, we remind you of a hodgepodge of ways to customize your Office experience, ranging from modifying and creating toolbars and ribbon tabs to changing keyboard shortcuts and taking advantage of templates. Use this chapter as a motivator to maximize the efficiency of the apps you work with most often.

Modify the Quick Access Toolbar

Office’s Quick Access toolbar, found at the top of every Office app window, is designed to deliver maximum utility in a minimum of space. So, it’s not surprising that some commands you want to see on it aren’t there and that others you never use are. Fortunately, you can easily add or remove commands from the Quick Access toolbar, if you like.

Here’s an example. The Save command is already on the Quick Access toolbar by default, but we often use the Save As command when writing. Perhaps we want to make changes to a document but don’t want to lose or modify some of what we’ve already written. We can use Save As to save a copy of the current document under a different name, allowing us to save the original as is and make any changes we like to the copy. Both versions of the document now coexist peacefully. Were it only that easy with other things in life!

We can thankfully add the Save As command — as well as a myriad of others — to the Quick Access toolbar, and can just as easily remove them, too. Here’s how:

1. Open the Preferences dialog in your app.
2. Click the Ribbon & Toolbar button.
3. Select the Quick Access Toolbar tab near the top of the dialog.
4. Select an item in the Choose commands from pop-up menu, scroll through the list of available commands, and then click to select the one you want to add to the Quick Access toolbar.

5. Click > in the middle of the dialog to add your desired command to the Customize Quick Access Toolbar commands list.

   To remove a command from the Quick Access toolbar, choose it in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar list and click < in the middle of the dialog.

6. (Optional) Drag and drop commands in the order you would prefer them to appear on the Quick Access toolbar.
7. To save your changes, click the Save button in the lower right.

Modify Existing Ribbon Tabs and Tab Groups

If you never use a certain command on a ribbon tab and you’d rather not have the command there to confuse you or clutter things, you can remove it. On the flipside, you can also add commands to ribbon tabs and tab groups.

As described in earlier chapters, you can add or delete commands from any ribbon tab or tab groups. Simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Preferences dialog in your app.
2. Click the Ribbon & Toolbar button.

3. Select the Ribbon tab near the top of the dialog.

   You see two sections: Choose Commands From and Customize the Ribbon.

4. Select an option in the Choose Commands From pop-up menu, scroll through the list of available commands, and then click the one you want to add to the ribbon.
5. Select an option in the Customize the Ribbon pop-up menu, and then click to select the tab and tab group to which you want to add the command you chose in Step 4.
6. Click > between the two sections to add the selected command to the desired ribbon tab.

7. Click the Save button in the lower right to save your changes.

   Your new command is listed in the ribbon tab you chose.

To remove a command from a tab, click to select it in the Customize the Ribbon list and click the < button located between the dialog’s two sections.

You may have noticed that the main tabs in the tabs list sometimes include tab groups, which are subcategories within the tab. Click > next to a tab group to expand its contents.

Show or hide ribbon tabs and tab groups by selecting or deselecting the check box to the left of their names.

There you have it: Customizing ribbon tabs and tab groups is easy and can make them easier to use and less confusing, too.

Create a New Ribbon Tab or Tab Group for Frequently Used Commands

You can create a brand-new ribbon tab from scratch for frequently used commands. (We find this option extremely useful.) Using a customized ribbon tab is an incredible timesaver compared to the other ways we might apply commands that aren’t in the ribbon or are scattered among several ribbon tabs. Tab groups are also a good way to group commands into a single place so you can easily access them.

To do so:

1. Open the Preferences dialog in your app.
2. Click the Ribbon & Toolbar button.
3. Select the Ribbon tab near the top of the dialog.
4. Click the + button at the bottom of the tabs list on the right and choose New Tab from the menu that appears.
5. Select the New Tab (Custom) that now appears in the tabs list.
6. Click the options icon (small circle with three dots) at the bottom of the tabs list and select Rename from the menu. Enter the name of your new tab in the Display Name field and then click the Save button.

Add new tab groups to your new tabs in the same way, repeating Steps 4–6 but selecting New Group instead of New Tab in Step 4.

Changes you make to menus and toolbars are saved in the app’s Normal document template by default, which is automatically applied to new documents you create.

Focus with Full Screen

Focusing your attention on work can be tough with other distractions on your computer’s screen. To help you concentrate on your documents, presentations, or spreadsheets, Office apps support full screen view, which lets the app take over your entire screen, crowding out any other items.

To enter full screen view from any Office app, choose View ⇒   Enter Full Screen.

When you’re in full screen, the menu at top of the screen is hidden from view. You can make the menu reappear by moving your cursor to the top of the screen and holding it there for a second or so until the menu shows up.

To exit full screen, move your cursor to the top of the screen until the menu appears and select View ⇒   Exit Full Screen, or simply press the Esc key.

You can toggle between entering and exiting full screen view by pressing ⌘  +Control+F.

Deal with Frequently Used Documents

If you work on the same document regularly, you can usually reopen it quickly by choosing File ⇒   Open Recent. And, if you don’t see the document on the Open Recent submenu, you can choose File ⇒   Open Recent ⇒   More to open the Project gallery, which shows you a longer list of recently used files.

Another way you can access the Project gallery is by clicking the Home button in the Quick Access toolbar. Clicking the Home button immediately opens the Project gallery to the Recent tab, where you can quickly peruse those previously open documents, spreadsheets, or presentations.

Remove Unused Keyboard Shortcuts

Sometimes, an Office app uses a keyboard shortcut that doesn’t make sense to you. Or the keyboard shortcut conflicts with a keyboard shortcut from another program.

Fortunately, problems like these are easy to fix, at least in Word and Excel.

To remove a keyboard shortcut from a command, follow these steps:

1. In Word or Excel, choose Tools ⇒   Customize Keyboard.

2. Select the menu or command category in the Categories list.

   If the command doesn’t appear in the category you expect it to appear in, choose the All Commands category, which contains every single command in the app.

3. Select the command in the Commands list.

   If you have difficulty finding the command, it may be because Microsoft gave the command a different name than the menu item that invokes it. Try typing the name of the command in the search field near the top of the Customize Keyboard window.

4. Click the existing shortcut in the Current Keys field.
5. Click the Remove button.
6. Click the OK button.

Change an Existing Keyboard Shortcut

A shortcut-related issue arises when you’ve memorized the shortcut for a particular command in another program you use and the Office app assigns a different shortcut to the command.

No problem — you can easily change the Office shortcut to match the one you’ve memorized. Follow these steps:

1. In Word or Excel, choose Tools ⇒   Customize Keyboard.
2. Select the menu or command category in the Categories list.
3. Select the command in the Commands list.
4. Click the existing shortcut in the Current Keys field.
5. Click the Remove button.
6. Click in the Press New Keyboard Shortcut field.
7. Press the keys you want to use as the new shortcut.

8. Click the Assign button.

   If the shortcut you’re trying to assign is already in use by another command, you see which command it’s assigned to just below the shortcut you just typed. If you still prefer to use the shortcut with this new command, go ahead and click the Assign button.

9. Click the OK button.

Create a New Keyboard Shortcut

Sometimes, a command in Word or Excel doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut but you wish it did. That’s no problem. Follow these steps to add a keyboard shortcut to a command that doesn’t already have one:

1. In Word or Excel, choose Tools ⇒   Customize Keyboard.
2. Select the menu or command category in the Categories list.
3. Select the command in the Commands list.
4. Click in the Press New Keyboard Shortcut field.
5. Press the keys you want to use as the new shortcut.
6. Click the Assign button.
7. Click the OK button.

Changes you make to keyboard shortcuts are saved in the Normal document template by default, which is automatically applied to new documents you create.

Create Your Own Templates

Creating your own templates for document types you use regularly is a powerful tool and one you should use as often as you can to save time and effort.

We cover Microsoft Word templates at length in Chapter 7 but mention them here to remind you that using them can save you much time and effort. You set them up once and can then use them repeatedly. The same idea applies to both Excel and PowerPoint: If you use a particular type of document regularly, for goodness’ sake, create a template for it so that you don’t have to keep repeating the same work.

After you’ve created and saved a template, you can use it easily. Choose File ⇒   New from Template, click the template you want to open from the gallery, and then click the Create button. That’s all there is to it.

Experiment with Dark Mode

Dark mode is a dark color scheme that allows you to make distinctions more easily between some elements or figures on your screen, or in some cases enhance the perception of some graphics and images on the display.

Dark mode isn’t built into Microsoft Office but is a feature of macOS. When you enable dark mode on your Mac, the dark color scheme is engaged system-wide, meaning every app and menu is affected by it (unless the app doesn’t support the mode, which is increasingly rare).

To enable dark mode:

1. Click the menu in the upper-left corner of your Mac’s screen and select System Preferences.
2. Select General in the System Preferences dialog.
3. In the Appearance section of the General dialog, click Dark.

What if you like dark mode in some but not all of your Office apps? Microsoft foresaw this possibility and made it easy to disable dark mode on an app-by-app basis. To disable dark mode for an individual Office app:

1. Open the Preferences dialog in your app.
2. Click the General button.
3. In the Personalize section of the General dialog, select the Turn Off Dark Mode radio button.