Published my first book: Ribbon Hater’s Handbook

This book explains how the Ribbon is an empowerment rather than a disappointment. Office Ribbon was introduced around for 7 years. Still most of us are still not comfortable with it. Some of us hate it actively, most of us just settle for a compromise.

View details on Amazon Kindle bookstore. Only available on Kindle platform.
USD 5 (INR 307).

If you don’t have a Kindle device you can still read it by downloading free Kindle Reader Apps for Windows PC/ Mac, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, iPhone or iPad devices.

Book Summary

1. Ribbon is good for you.
2. Read  each tooltip in each tab to learn more about great features which you may be ignoring
3. Add commonly used buttons which don’t have keyboard shortcuts to Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)
4. Add buttons which you need but are not available in the Ribbon to the QAT
5. First 9 buttons get automatic shortcuts Alt 1 to Alt 9
6. Therefore, arrange the most useful 9 buttons in QAT at first 9 positions
7. Create Custom Ribbon and Custom QAT as per your needs
8. Commonly used buttons go into QAT. Activity related buttons go into custom Ribbon tabs
9. The File menu now occupies the full screen for a purpose. Explore all options there and you will be surprised how much you were missing out on.
10. Quick Print button can be activated by using the dropdown next to the QAT
11. You must share your customization with your colleagues using Export / Import feature
12. IT can deploy pre-customized ribbon automatically using a login script and group policy
13. Sometimes, you need to create a custom ribbon for a specific document.
14. Such documents, if commonly reused, should be stored as templates.
15. Templates can be shared using email (not recommended), SharePoint + Group Policy or SharePoint Content Types
16. Download interactive command guides. These help you find old commands in the new UI.

Features NOT mentioned in the book

Specially for followers of this blog

Double click works with some buttons

Try using it on Format Painter and Highlighter. Double clicking allows you to use the button repeatedly – it remains in the same ‘Mode’.

For example, if you want to copy formatting from one shape and apply it to multiple shapes (even across slides) – this is how you do it.

1. Select the original shape from where you want to copy the formatting.
2. Double click on Format Painter.
3. Now the mouse cursor changes.
4. Now click on one or more shapes.
5. You can change to another slide, still it is in Format Painter mode.
6. When you finish, press Escape.

Double click DOES NOT work with shapes

This is unfortunate because we do need to draw multiple shapes of the same type quite often. But don’t worry. Right click on the shape and choose Lock Drawing Mode.

Now you can draw multiple shapes of the same type without clicking on the shape icon repeatedly.

Next Article

I will cover what I learnt while creating and publishing the Kindle Book.