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About this lesson

Set up the vital buttons you use most to make your work easier.

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2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

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Quick Access Toolbar.docx
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Quick reference

The Quick Access Toolbar

Set up the vital buttons to make your work easier.

When to use

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar allows you to access your most used commands all in one place

Instructions

  1.  Customize the Quick Access Toolbar
    (located above the FILE ribbon)
  1. First, right click the Quick Access toolbar and select “Show Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon”
  2. Then Click the dropdown arrow on the right side of the Quick Access Bar
  3. Add checkmarks to each of the first set of items (see photo >>>)
  4. Click the drop down again and choose “More Commands”
  5. Find “Save As” in the list and Double Click it to add to the list of buttons on the right column.
  6. Rearrange the buttons by clicking the move-up and move-down arrows on the right side
     
  7. Tip:  As you find buttons on the ribbons that you’d like on the Quick Access bar, just Right Click the button and select “Add to Quick Access bar”

 

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  • 00:04 Hello, in this lesson I wanna talk to you about the Quick Access bar that sits above
  • 00:08 your File and your Home ribbon, this little set of tools right here.
  • 00:12 Possibly the most productive toolbar in all of Microsoft Word
  • 00:16 completely out of reach from your work area.
  • 00:19 So the first thing I'd like you to do is hit the dropdown arrow on the end of that
  • 00:22 Quick Access toolbar and choose at the very bottom, Show Below the Ribbon.
  • 00:26 When you activate that, it now sits below the ribbon right next to your work area.
  • 00:30 All right, now go ahead and hit the dropdown arrow again, and put a checkmark
  • 00:35 on all of the items that don't already have little checkmarks on them.
  • 00:40 I realize that the list continues to disappear.
  • 00:44 I know, it's frustrating.
  • 00:45 But the good news is you only have to do this once.
  • 00:49 After you've added the checkmarks on all of those, now what we're
  • 00:53 going to do is we're going to add more buttons that are on our Home ribbon.
  • 00:57 And the reason we're gonna do this is, if for
  • 01:00 some reason I'm on the Layout ribbon adjusting my margins or whatever and
  • 01:04 at a glance I want to know what font and size the word Hello is on my screen here.
  • 01:10 Well, I have to stop everything I'm doing to go
  • 01:12 back to the Home ribbon just to observe this information.
  • 01:15 Well, if we add that to our Quick Access bar, then it's gonna sit right there and
  • 01:19 be at a glance feedback information all the time.
  • 01:23 So let's go ahead and do that.
  • 01:25 Now if I right-click on Calibri, I get Cut, Copy, Paste.
  • 01:29 But if I right-click on the dropdown arrow of Calibri, I click it once and
  • 01:33 I get the list.
  • 01:34 But if I right-click again, the very first option says Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
  • 01:39 When I activate that, now I do have my font style on my Quick Access.
  • 01:44 As you can see,
  • 01:45 let me flip over to a different ribbon, doesn't matter what ribbon I'm on.
  • 01:48 At a glance, I can see what font style these words are.
  • 01:52 And that is why we customize the Quick Access, and
  • 01:54 this is why it makes it productive.
  • 01:56 All right, going back to the Home ribbon,
  • 01:58 I wanna do the same thing to the Font Size.
  • 01:59 Now if I right-click the dropdown arrow once, I get the entire list of sizes.
  • 02:04 Right-click it again and now I get the option to Add to Quick Access.
  • 02:08 Now the two little buttons beside it, the A up and
  • 02:11 the A down simply means font bigger, font smaller.
  • 02:14 We're gonna go ahead and add those buttons and the font color.
  • 02:18 Want to add that, again, not just the red, but the dropdown arrow so
  • 02:22 we get all the actions.
  • 02:23 Click it once, I get the colors.
  • 02:25 Click it again, now I get the Add to Quick Access.
  • 02:28 Remember, these are always right-clicks.
  • 02:30 Now there's a little button over here, it's a little format painter.
  • 02:34 My favorite button in all of Microsoft Word.
  • 02:36 Go ahead and add that to your Quick Access.
  • 02:38 And there you have it, it is all set up.
  • 02:40 Now there is a way to customize these and re-arrange them.
  • 02:43 So I'm gonna hit the dropdown arrow one more time and way at the bottom,
  • 02:46 we have More Commands.
  • 02:48 So go ahead and activate More Commands, and
  • 02:50 you'll notice on the right-hand side this is my existing Quick Access bar, and
  • 02:54 over on the left is a list of Popular Commands.
  • 02:59 Well, I want to add the Save As button, so I'm gonna scroll down here to the S's.
  • 03:05 And the Save As button is a wonderful button, if you double-click it,
  • 03:08 it'll pop right over there on the right-hand side.
  • 03:10 But now I wanna move it up to the top, so further on the right-hand side,
  • 03:14 we have this little move-up button.
  • 03:17 So I'm just going to hit that quite a few times and
  • 03:19 then the Save As is right up on top.
  • 03:21 Now you can rearrange these any way you prefer.
  • 03:23 It is your personal preference.
  • 03:25 I prefer to have New File way up at the top and
  • 03:28 I want the Open right beside that one on my Quick Access.
  • 03:32 So I have New, Open, Save, Save As, and then the rest of my buttons.
  • 03:36 All right,
  • 03:37 at this point I'm gonna call that okay and notice what happened to my Quick Access.
  • 03:41 Just rearranged the way I liked it and
  • 03:43 now I have a wonderful little Save As button there.
  • 03:46 All right, set that up, it will be worth your while.
  • 03:49 Thank you.

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