I have just bought an Amazon fire stick preloaded with Kodi isengard. The main screen does not show the "files" and "add on" tabs beneath any of the categories - only some of the shortcuts. what do I need to do to enable these headings to show on the screen. Be kind....I'm new to all this
Firstly, I hope you didn't get ripped off by somebody when you bought your fire stick. Anybody can install Kodi on these devices in minutes with a little research.
Secondly, a lot of the time these get sold pre-loaded with a lot of potentially malicious piracy add-ons (piracy is not supported here). It's also possible you have an unofficial build of Kodi which in turn is not supported and can lead to problems.
My recommendation would be to install Kodi yourself by firstly removing your currently installed version. You would then have an official and clean installation to start watching your own content on and some great legitimate add-ons in the official repository to explore.
This section of the wiki has all the information you need:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Amazon_Fire_TV