What you're describing is Word's Ribbon, which has a variety of tabs - File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View and, depending on your setup, Developer & Add-Ins. By default, Word opens with the Home tab displayed. On that tab you'll see panels for Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles & Editing. The File tab is always blue (which doesn't indicate that it's the default) and whichever of the others is active is always white. The active tab changes according to what you're doing.

I suspect that what you've done is that you've minimised the Ribbon, which means none of the tabs is active. To restore it click on the V-shaped symbol next to the ? on the right-hand side of the screen.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]