Modifying the Display of the Ribbon in File Explorer

The goal of the Windows 8 File Explorer environment, available on the desktop, is to make finding, sharing, organizing, and working with Word documents, music files, pictures, vid- eos, and other data as intuitive as possible. In addition, from File Explorer, you can easily

access data stored in your homegroup, data on other drives connected to or part of your computer, and any data available to you on your network.

You access data in File Explorer by selecting the desired folder or location in the Navigation pane, on the left side of the File Explorer window, and then selecting the desired file(s) in the content area on the right. With a folder or file selected, you can then use the ribbon to manage that data. The ribbon contains tabs and groups to help you perform tasks on the data you select.

Ribbon Tabs             Ribbon Groups

Navigation Pane

Commands are organized on task-specific tabs of the ribbon and in feature-specific groups on each tab. Commands generally take the form of buttons and lists. Some appear in galleries. Some groups have related dialog boxes or task panes that contain additional commands.

Throughout this book, we discuss the commands and ribbon elements associated with the program feature being discussed. In this topic, we discuss the general appearance of the ribbon, things that affect its appearance, and ways of locating commands that aren’t visible on compact views of the ribbon.

TIP Some older commands no longer appear on the ribbon but are still available in the program. You can make these commands available by adding them to the Quick Access toolbar, located just above the tabs on the ribbon by default, although it can be moved.