No TOOLS tab

[Dave Davison]

Just had my PC upgraded to Windows 10 and find it less easy than W7 but must persevere with it so my first little hurdle is "Where have they concealed the TOOLS button? It was there in W7 and is there in W11 so why they have made it more difficult to access the 13 apps in the sub menu beats me. Hitting the window and space key together no longer reverts one back to the desktop, another backward step. Thanks Dave.

[HansV]

Your screenshot is of Word - that has nothing to do with Windows.
Word doesn't have a Tools tab, and hasn't had a Tools menu since Word 2007.

To activate the desktop an hide all active applications, press Windows key+D. Pressing Windows key+D again unhides all active applications.

[SpeakEasy]

>hasn't had a Tools menu since Word 2007

Not entirely true. It is still there, just really, really well hidden. Needs VBA to reveal.

[HansV]

@speakeasy: That is true, but not relevant to Dave's problem. He doesn't use VBA.

[Charles Kenyon]

There are sort of tools tabs, depending on the version of Word.
They are generally contextual and also contain other tabs so you often never see them. They are not the equivalent of the old Tools menu.

• https://addbalance.com/word/ribbons.htm ... and_Footer

• https://addbalance.com/word/ribbons.htm#Picture

• https://addbalance.com/word/ribbons.htm#Drawing

[Jay Freedman]

At the 2006 MVP Summit, the program manager in charge of the Ribbon team described the Tools menu in Word 2003 as "the junk drawer where we threw all the stuff that didn't fit anywhere else". He claimed that the tabs in Word 2007 would eliminate the hunt for commands like Mail Merge and AutoCorrect. Well, it took a few more revisions and the implementation of the search box, and there's still a fair amount of hunting going on...

The one thing we've asked for repeatedly and still haven't gotten is the addition of everything in the Options dialogs to the search results.