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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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Thanks Rafal for the insights but no "use simplified ribbon" in newest versions of office
This fixed it for me as well! My client had a surface tablet so what that does is give them more room to use touch controls when using word or other office programs. Thank you!
Clicking to mouse doesn't make it very much smaller on my screen. TOO BIG!
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.
Hi All,
I googled this subject as I just switched over to Office 2013 from Office 2010. Also upgraded to Windows 10. Working on Surface Pro 3 that's attached to a 24" Samsung Monitor. This was the thread I landed on. I am smiling as the ribbon takes up about 20% of the top of my screen. It's sure pretty but I would like to be reduced if just a little. I did find the finger pointer and switched to mouse but it's only reduce very little Any new advise?
Thanks in advance.