Ribbon and Tabs in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Introducing the Ribbon
Ribbon Contents

Introducing the Ribbon

The Ribbon along with its tabs makes its debut in Microsoft PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. Unlike the PowerPoint versions on Windows though, the Ribbon does not replace all the menus and toolbars that were found in PowerPoint 2008 and older Mac versions.

The Ribbon is essentially a long strip that's fixed in size (highlighted in red within Figure 1) so that you cannot change its width or height. The Ribbon includes several tabs -- and each tab is named as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Ribbon in PowerPoint 2011

Ribbon Content

The Ribbon contains many interface elements:

1. Tabs: The Ribbon consists of fixed tabs such as Home, Themes, Tables, etc. Each tab contains sets of tools to create and edit presentations. By default, the Developer tab is not visible in the Ribbon although you can enable it yourself.
2. Contextual Tabs 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. Figure 2 shows the Format tab (highlighted in red) which is only activated when a shape or another drawing object is selected on the slide.
3. 
   Figure 2: Format tab in the Ribbon
3. Group: A group of related tools within a tab is known as a Group. Figure 3 shows the Shape Styles group within the Format tab.
4. 
   Figure 3: Shapes Styles group
4. A Gallery is 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 (which is explained next). The figure below shows the Shape Styles gallery -- all available styles can be seen as small preview thumbnails.
5. 
   Figure 4: Shape Style Gallery
5. The More button expands a gallery within a Ribbon tab so that all or more options can be seen. Figure 5 shows you the More button at the bottom (highlighted in red) of the Shape Styles group, the More button only appears when you place your cursor over the thumbnail area of the Shape Styles (refer to Figure 5 again). Just click the More button to open the gallery. The two arrow buttons at the right and left end of the Shape Styles thumbnail area are used to scroll inside the gallery without expanding it.
6. 
   Figure 5: More button
6. The Down Arrow is a small downward pointing triangle that's placed next to many buttons on the Ribbon tabs. When clicked, this displays a gallery or an additional option/submenu related to the selected tools -- you can see the Down Arrow (highlighted in red) next to the Fill option in Figure 6.
7. 
   Figure 6: Down Arrow