Symptoms

When you look at the Ribbon, you might not see all of the icons or the text that is used in some Help topics to describe the commands on the Ribbon.

Cause

The size of the Ribbon is optimized for a screen resolution of 1024 × 786 pixels when the Microsoft Office program is maximized on your screen. The Help topics were written by using that standard size for the Ribbon.

For example, the full Insert tab in Microsoft Office Word shows all text and icons.word insert tab

When you make the Ribbon smaller, the groups on the open tab begin to shrink horizontally and show a single icon. The most commonly used commands or features are left open as the program window shrinks.

Note When the user interface (UI) is not displayed full size, the icons might not be displayed in the same order as before. For example, icons that were displayed on one row may be displayed three rows deep.

The following shows the Text group on the Insert tab when the Ribbon is made smaller and only one icon appears.text group shown as icon

The following shows the Text group after you click the arrow under the Text group icon.text group after click arrow

Resolution

Do one of the following: