Customize Ribbon Size to Make it Smaller

Don't understand why you are absolving Microsoft from blame for Ribbon design when everything else in your comment reflects how the bad design affects you! I've got a 27-inch monitor and even with that, I could do with a little less Ribbon. I also have Surface--cannot imagine working on Word 2010 in that small screen space.

I agree that the Ribbon in Word is way to big. However, at least in my case do not think or agree that Microsoft has it backwards & or just made it too big. I have a new Microsoft Surfacebook and somehow the size of things such as some fonts and icons seems to me to have been off since I got it. Now I had to delete the newer copy of Microsoft office that came with my computer in order to be able to install and use Office Home & Student 2013 the only license I have. Unfortunately, though, after I was finally able to install it and opened it for the first time to start using it, the ribbon looked huge. About double the size it normally looks like on every other computer I have seen and or used it on. I does not look like Microsoft just made it big or that is just the way it is supposed to be. It just does not look right. I have Installed & used this same license of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 of several computers & none of them ever looked like this! They absolutely just did not look this big! The problem now is that even though this is a technical problem with the program, I don't know if there is anything that can be done about it since I read it is not possible to change the size of ribbon. This is just unacceptable! 

Jennifer

I too found this to be unacceptable.  Even on my extended monitor, it takes up such a large percent of the screen to the point it doesn't allow for proper display of information.  The more I attempt to use Office 2013, the more I am hating it because of the various issues with it including the color contrast, the sizes, and there's no way to really adjust it.  Windows 10 also took away a lot of these things that I had set in Windows 7 to the point I could only address a small portion of them via VBA coding.

When I looked up for an answer for the ribbon size was for Access 2016.  Anyway what I was able to do as I really only needed the find button, so I added it through the Customize Quick Accesses Toolbar.  So now I don't need the home ribbon on and then it gets me the space back that the Home Ribbon took up.  There are more functions that you can add with the Customize Quick Accesses Toolbar also.

CLR, I think there are 2 different issues/problems being discussed here.

The first one, is the fact that the ribbon is simply "phat" and wastes a lot of screen space when compared to the 'good old' menu. There is essentially nothing we can do about that problem.

Your problem, where the ribbon takes up more than a "normal" amount of screen space is generally known as a "scaling" issue. In some cases, Office, and Windows, do not resize application elements correctly on screen. Typically the problem has been reported in relation to PowerPoint, but not exclusively.

Here are some links to other questions on the issue, with some possible fixes

PowerPoint Scaling on Dual monitor

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-powerpoint/problem-with-office-programs-scaling-wierdly/23b68a55-3674-426c-8f26-06b95e499bae

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_365hp-powerpoint/powerpoint-will-not-scale-properly-on-second/90235c12-ee4b-44ec-aafb-856b4edd6948

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-powerpoint/why-do-some-programs-not-rescale-when-moving/2d6b217d-f81c-4115-9157-c9757bb81ef8?page=4&msgId=b3450b98-b28e-45e3-9ec9-fe39c80de563 

PPT 2013 Poor Scaling (Fuzzy/Blurry) on High-Res Display

Office on External monitor not scaling properly – Win 10

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-word/office-365-external-monitor-scaling-after-windows/a2b0281a-e8c8-4134-8bb0-9fdf2f22f666

Whenever I open an Office file (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) directly from within a directory, the auto-scaling doesn't work. Everything is huge when I drag it onto my 1080p monitor. However, when I open the program first, and then browse for and open the file from within the program, the auto-scaling works fine. I've uninstalled and reinstalled office, and that didn't fix it.

Fix: Turn off Preview Pane in Windows Explorer> View tab > Panes group > select one of the other layouts, other than “Preview pane”!

Edit Manifest file

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-powerpoint/why-do-some-programs-not-rescale-when-moving/2d6b217d-f81c-4115-9157-c9757bb81ef8?page=7&msgId=512d0e7f-980e-4377-88d8-9f39c79c1263

<snip>Thank you for this pointer. Seems that this does, indeed, fix the problem (for me, at least).

For my setup (Windows 8.1, Surface Pro 3, Office 365 - Office 15) the specific instructions are few and simple:

1. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15
2. Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and change the permission so you can modify the file
3. Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and open with Wordpad
4. Change the line

    <dpiAware>True/PM</dpiAware>

    to

    <dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>

5. Save file

(at least with Office 365, you don't need to do anything in the registry as it's already looking at the external manifest file.)

Yes, line 4 seems counter-intuitive, but it's correct. Once you change this to False, Powerpoint will scale moving from high to lower DPI monitors. I've not encountered any other issues, but I've not used it for very long, yet.

Thanks to the previous pointers/authors for this tip.

(Do read

http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

if you want more details and the history of this.)

</snip>

rescale- powerpoint will not scale properly on second Monitor – Scaling

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-powerpoint/powerpoint-will-not-scale-properly-on-second/90235c12-ee4b-44ec-aafb-856b4edd6948

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-powerpoint/why-do-some-programs-not-rescale-when-moving/2d6b217d-f81c-4115-9157-c9757bb81ef8?page=4&msgId=b3450b98-b28e-45e3-9ec9-fe39c80de563 

Thank you for this pointer. Seems that this does, indeed, fix the problem (for me, at least).

For my setup (Windows 8.1, Surface Pro 3, Office 365 - Office 15) the specific instructions are few and simple:

1. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15
2. Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and change the permission so you can modify the file
3. Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and open with Wordpad
4. Change the line

    <dpiAware>True/PM</dpiAware>

    to

    <dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>

5. Save file

(at least with Office 365, you don’t need to do anything in the registry as it’s already looking at the external manifest file.)

Yes, line 4 seems counter-intuitive, but it’s correct. Once you change this to False, Powerpoint will scale moving from high to lower DPI monitors. I’ve not encountered any other issues, but I’ve not used it for very long, yet.

Thanks to the previous pointers/authors for this tip.

(Do read http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/ if you want more details and the history of this.)

*********

If that does not help, try removing the /PM also, changing the line to 

<dpiAware>True</dpiAware>

 instead of 

<dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>

*********

I am on a Yoga 3 Pro with Office 2016 (beta) now, did a search for powerpnt.exe.manifest and found it here:

C:\ProgramFiles (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16

PPT Scaling Across Multiple Monitors

<snip>

I followed these instructions and was starting to despair when neither disabling the DPI scaling nor changing the pointer to mouse made a difference.

I was having the same issue in Power Point with the giant ribbon extending my desktop across a pair of Samsung S27E450 monitors.

To resolve I called my help desk and they walked me through these steps which worked and now power point looks normal on my external monitors.

1. 1.   Go into display settings
2. 2.   Choose one of the monitors that you was extending to - which is the main monitor for me
3. 3.   Scroll to bottom and choose Advanced display settings
4. 4.   In Multiple Displays - choose Extend desktop to this display
5. 5.   Choose the right resolution for the monitor - listed as (recommended) by Windows
6. 6.   Hit apply
7. 7.   Save the changes
8. 8.   Go back to advanced settings for that monitor - Look for a request to log out next to the Multiple Displays
9. 9.   Log out

Log In

11. Start Power Point  

Hope this helps!

</snip>