Office 2007 Overview: The Ribbon
The Ribbon is located across the top of the Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word application windows. It also appears at the top of the New Message window in Outlook. It consists of buttons, menus, and dialog boxes grouped on various tabs to facilitate locating the tools required for a particular task. For example, the Home tab contains many of the features previously located on the Standard and Formatting toolbars; other tabs vary by application. You can hide/restore the Ribbon by double-clicking the currently selected tab.
Optional Activity: View static images of Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word ribbons.
- Contextual tabs contain options for working with an objects. Whenever you click an existing object or add a new image, table, or chart, specialized tools for working with the object appear as additional tabs at the top of the Ribbon. When you click away from the object, the tools are put away.
- Dialog Box Launchers are clickable icons for accessing additional features related to certain tools. For example, on Word's Page Layout tab, there are Dialog Box Launchers for Page Setup and Paragraph. The Dialog Box Launchers you see depend on the application you are using.
- Galleries are collections of thumbnails on the Ribbon that provide easy access to a variety of styling options. For example, if you highlight text and move your mouse over a Gallery thumbnail, Office uses Live Preview to show you what the change will look like without committing to it. You also can do the same by rolling over a font.
Additional assistance is available within the Office applications
by clicking 
[Help]
located on the right side of the Ribbon.