There's a quiet frustration that builds when you follow a tutorial to the letter, only to find your screen doesn't match the one in the video. That's exactly where the user in this post lands: they're on a MacBook Air running Excel Version 16.107.4, and the YouTube tutorials they're following show a "File" menu tab at the far left of the top menu bar. Their own screen doesn't have it. The immediate question is practical: how do I make my workspace look like the one in the tutorial?
The answer, as it often is with Excel, isn't about a hidden setting or a clever workaround. It's about understanding that the version of Excel you're using shapes what you see. The tutorial they're watching likely runs on a different version of Excel for Mac, or possibly a Windows build where the menu structure is intentionally different. On the Mac, Excel has historically placed the "File" menu in the system-wide menu bar at the very top of the screen, separate from the ribbon tabs. That's not a bug, and it's not something you've toggled off by accident. It's just how the software is designed for your platform.
What this means for you, practically, is that matching a tutorial's interface frame-for-frame is often less important than understanding what the tutorial is teaching you to do. If the video shows a "File" tab but your version places those options under the Excel menu or within the ribbon's backstage view, you can still complete the same actions. The user's screenshot shows a standard Mac layout, and the tutorial's screenshot shows a layout that may be from an older or different build. Neither is wrong, but they are different. That difference is the real lesson here.
So, what should you do next time you're following along? Don't pause and hunt for a menu option that may not exist in your version. Instead, search for the specific action you want to perform, like "rename a sheet" or "change the default font", and then look for that action in your own interface. You'll often find it in a slightly different spot, but it will be there. In this case, the user's "File" menu is likely accessible from the top-left corner of the screen, just to the left of the Excel menu, even if it doesn't appear as a tab in the ribbon. That's the version-specific detail that makes all the difference. Check there first, and you'll save yourself the confusion of trying to force your workspace into a shape it was never designed to take.