The ribbon at the top of the window in Microsoft Office programs like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint offers ways for you to change the settings and formats of your slideshow. It has been the main navigational method in several versions of Office, and features a number of of ways to customize your presentation.
But that ribbon takes up a lot of space at the top of the window, especially when the window is smaller. Fortunately there is a setting that you can adjust which will cause the ribbon to collapse automatically when you make the Powerpoint window smaller.
How to Only Show the Ribbon Tabs in Powerpoint
The steps in this article were performed in the Microsoft Powerpoint for Office 365 version of the application. Note that when you enable this setting Powerpoint will automatically reduce the ribbon to only the tab names when you make the window smaller. You can still view the options on a ribbon tab by clicking the tab name.
Step 1: Open Microsoft Powerpoint.
Step 2: Select the File tab at the top-left of the window.
Step 3: Click the Options button at the bottom-left corner of the window.
Step 4: Check the box to the left of Collapse the ribbon automatically, then click the OK button at the bottom of the window.
Now you can make the Powerpoint window smaller and see what it looks like with the ribbon collapsed. Below you can see an example of what happens when this setting is enabled.
Do you need to change the orientation of your slideshow? Find out how to make your slides vertical in Powerpoint if your project requires a different layout.
Matthew Burleigh has been a freelance writer since the early 2000s. You can find his writing all over the Web, where his content has collectively been read millions of times.
Matthew received his Master’s degree in Computer Science, then spent over a decade as an IT consultant for small businesses before focusing on writing and website creation.
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