Customize Ribbon Size to Make it Smaller

This is an old thread but with Office 365, it seems to be even worse!  This is a common complaint at my office.  What I did was customize their Quick Access Toolbar with the most common, reply, reply all, forward, delete, etc.  You can select More Commands at the bottom of the menu.  I then made it appear below the ribbon and then hid the ribbon.  In the rare occasion I need something else, a brief inconvenience to hit the tab.  As far as I am concerned, give me the Outlook 2003 interface any day!

yes. it was ok earlier

It has probably come up before, but it's worth repeating: Microsoft listens at UserVoice.  As I write this, the base post says that 870 people have the same question.

If all these people upvoted the same issue at outlook.uservoice.com ( https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows/suggestions/34395265-the-ribbion-tool-bar ) it would rise to the top pretty rapidly.

This work around that I use isn't really a solution, but given these LCD/LED monitors don't have as good of a DPI (dot/pixels per inch) as compared to the older CRT monitors, thus while our screens are larger, the resolution isn't any better (Max I can get is 1920x1080 for a 24" x 13" viewable area), this work around is about the only real option for as long as we want to work with Excel.  That is to press Ctrl-F1 to hide the portion of the ribbon bar that has all the buttons, and the tabs to the various ribbons are still visible.  You can also click the little up arrow (caret symbol) on the far right hand side to collapse it. To have it reappear, press Ctrl-F1 again or click on one of the tabs, then the pin on the far right hand side if you want to have it stay in place permanently.  I normally alternate between the two with this Ctrl-F1 keyboard shortcut as it depends on what I am working on.  Some things like a project I been working on, I don't use the ribbon bar much other than for things that I already have down to quickly using keyboard shortcuts (doing data entry as well as doing IT work will do that to you, where you are more of a keyboard user than a mouse user), and certain other other files may be more friendly using the ribbon bar more frequently but yet, the content portion may not necessarily use up as much of the area.

I use to get more total pixels on the screen with the 19" CRTs than I do with the current monitors, even though the current monitors are physically larger in terms of viewing area, but also not nearly as bulky and don't use up nearly as much energy not to mention they aren't nearly as dangerous as the CRTs.  So this eating away of our screen real estate has been compounded by poorer quality in terms of less DPI and MS making their ribbons larger.