At first glance you may think that the accessing Ribbon is completely Mouse- centric. After all, the commands don’t display the traditional underlined letter to indicate the Alt +keystrokes. But in fact, the Ribbon is very keyboard friendly. The trick is to press the alt key to display the pop-up key tips. Each Ribbon control has a letter that you type to issue the command.
Accessing ribbon by using your keyboard
Below figure shows how the home tab looks after I press the alt key to display the key tips, and then the H key to display the key tips for the home tab. If you press one of the key tips, the screen then displays more key tips. For example, to use the keyboard to align the cell contents to the left, press alt, followed by H, and then AL.
Nobody will memorize all these keys, but if you are a keyboard fan, it takes just a few times before you memorize the keystrokes required for commands that you use frequently.
After you press alt, you can also use the left – and right – arrow keys to scroll through the tabs. When you reach the proper tab, press the down arrow to enter the ribbon. Then use left and right arrow keys to scroll through the ribbon commands. When you reach the command you need, press enter to execute it. This method isn’t efficient as using the key tips, but it’s a quick way to take a look at the commands available.