How to Add Chrome-like tabs to Word documents

Web browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, let you access different websites from the same window using tabs. Similarly, Office Tabs is a free add-in that adds tabs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, letting you access multiple files from the same window. You can also create groups of ‘favorites’ for files you regularly access. In this article, you will see  how to customize the default tab appearance and create your own keyboard shortcuts to navigate between open files.

Before installing Office Tabs, you’ll need to check what version of Office you’re using. Open Word, click File at the top left, Account (Help in Office 2010), then check the version of Office at the top right. Now close Word, go to the Office Tabs Free Download page and click the orange Download button. Run the downloaded setup file until you get to the ‘Select products’ screen. Now tick your version of Office  (select the second option if you use Office 2013 or 2016), then keep clicking Next  until you need to click Install, then click Finish.

Close the Office Tabs Center window and open Word. You’ll see a new tab with your document name at the top left. 1 Click the small tab to the right to open a new document. You’ll also see the new Office Tab on your Ribbon. These same options will appear within Excel and PowerPoint. From now on, whenever you open a new document, it’ll appear as a new tab rather than in a new window. To open multiple files as separate tabs, navigate to the folder where they’re stored, press Shift, click to select the documents you want to open, right-click the selection, then click Open.

Right-click any document tab in Word to see a pop-up menu containing many options. Apart from the usual options (New, Close, Save As), you’ll see options to close the other tabs or the ones on the left or right . You can also open the document’s folder or rename the file. If you have many Word documents open, add colors to their tabs to help differentiate between them. To do that, move your cursor to Tab Color and select the one you want.

Just as Chrome lets you bookmark your favorite websites for easy access, Office Tabs has the same feature for documents. To do this, first press Ctrl+S to save that file. Now click the Office Tab on your Ribbon, then the ‘Add to Favorites’ drop-down menu. You’ll see two options - ‘Add to Word Favorites’ and ‘Add to Office Favorites’. The latter makes your favorites accessible across all Office programs. The former restricts it to Word, so click ‘Add to Word Favorites’, then click Add. Repeat this step to add other documents to your favorites list.

By default, your documents are added to a group called My Favorites. To access these files, click the My Favorites drop-down menu. It’s easy to create another group where you can save files to. To do that, click the top-left ‘Add to Favorites’ drop-down menu, ‘Add to Word Favorites’, New Group, name the group, click OK, then Add. These groups appear in the Word Favorites section. To save a file to a particular group, open that document, click the relevant group drop-down menu (in the Word Favorites section), then click ‘Add to this Group’.

Similar to Chrome, you can navigate between any open tabs within Word using keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Ctrl+Tab moves you to the tab on the right and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Tab moves you to the tab on the left. To change these, click the Office Tab on your Ribbon, then click Options Center on the right. Now click the Forward or Back fields which refer to the right and left tabs respectively. Press the keys on your keyboard to confirm the shortcut you want to use. You’ll see a pop-up message if you can’t use those keys.

Your Office tabs appear as rounded rectangles, but you can change their appearance from within the Option Center. Click the Style & Color section, then click the ‘Select Tab style’ drop-down menu and select one of the six styles. You’ll immediately see a preview of how it’ll look. You can also change the font and font size of the file name that appears on your tab. To do that, tick Custom Font and select one from the drop-down menu. Now tick ‘Custom Font size’ and change it from the drop-down menu. Click OK at the bottom to apply all the changes made to the Options menu.