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I'm extremely disappointed that Microsoft has made the ribbon so HUGE and does not appear to offer any way of customizing its size other than completely collapsing it. Between the menu bar, the ribbon, the formula bar, etc. almost HALF of the screen real estate is non-content. Microsoft has it backwards, thinking the more screen space should go to the user interface rather than the content. This is maddening, and it's extremely frustrating that Microsoft doesn't allow me to customize the size of the ribbon to maximize content. Does anyone know of a work around?
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I'm running into the same problem and I absolutley cannot believe that this has been a problem for this long with no resolution. even with the "mouse settings" enabled, the menu bar takes up 1/4 of my screen, that's just stupid.
Microsoft, there needs to be a fix for this.
I'm having the opposite problem of you. My ribbon has become very small. I don't know how and why. On my 10 in screen it's hard to read it.
Click on the icon that looks like a finger pointing and choose "mouse." A quick, simple solution - though not at all intuitive. was very useful - thank you
THANK YOU!!!! no, it isn't at all intuitive. I've been looking for over a week and finally found your post. VERY HELPFUL!
I have found another, brute force, work-around.
Get a second monitor, or your primary monitor if it is not connected to a laptop, and rotate it into Portrait orientation. Now the phat ribbon is no longer such an overwhelming waste of screen real-estate .
It is really unfortunate that the ribbon showed up on our desktops just as the switch was being made from CRT's, with their much higher resolutions (oh how I miss the extra working space) to LCD with their fixed and (relatively) limited resolutions. And the move to laptops, with even smaller resolution LCD screens certainly didn't help with this problem.