How to get the Ribbon Bar Back in Outlook

If you open Outlook only to find that the ribbon bar, and all of the buttons at the top, are missing then you’re not alone. The desktop client for Outlook has a peculiar feature that allows you to hide the ribbon bar.

There’s two small icons that you can accidentally click and find yourself in this situations. Thankfully, fixing it is as simple as locating these icons and changing it back to the way it was.

In this article, we’ll show you what you need to do to get the ribbon bar back in Outlook.

How to Restore the Ribbon bar in Outlook

There’s two icons that, when clicked, can cause the ribbon bar in Outlook to vanish. One is located in the ribbon itself, and looks like a thumbtack, while the other is located at the upper right corner of the Outlook client.

Which one you need to find depends on what you’re Outlook looks like. Below, we’ll show you how to restore the Outlook ribbon in either case.

File, Home, and Other Tabs are Still Showing

If all of your tabs are still present (File, Home, etc.) follow the following steps to restore the ribbon bar.

1. Click the Home tab at the top of Outlook to see the ribbon.
   
2. Locate the Thumb tack icon on the far bottom right hand corner of the ribbon and click it.
   
3. The Outlook ribbon should now always be present.

Even the Tabs are Missing

If you’re missing the File, Home, and other tabs you might need to disable the Ribbon Auto-hide feature instead.

To do this, look for an icon depicting a box with an up arrow inside of it at the upper right hand corner of Outlook (next to the X to close it).

Click it and then select Show Tabs and Commands.