Well, if there's nothing related to a context tab selected, it would be inappropriate for the program to give you access to those options. If you delete the object, what use are those options to you? You can't apply them to anything unless you create a new object. In reality, this is no different to the graying-out of various options that used to happen with toolbars and still happens with ribbon items at various times.

What you seem to be demanding - and no office program has ever allowed - is unfettered access to any and all options regardless of whether they can be used. What good do you suppose it would be having the ribbon display and give access to the resizing options on the drawing tools tab, for example, when there's nothing they can be applied to? Are you saying office should always leave the last tab visible and selected in such cases? Microsoft would be justly criticized if it allowed this. the whole reason for going to the Ribbon interface was to help users by not even displaying options that are inappropriate in a given context; that was one of the problems of the old toolbars, even though various options might be grayed out, they were still always visible. Users would then regularly complain the apps wouldn't let them use options they could see on the toolbars.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]