Quick Access Toolbar Office 2016 Icon Spacing too big

Thanks for the confirmation.

Appears that is one more perk for constantly paying for a 365 "subscription" rather than paying only once.  In theory the fix will appear in Office Vnext one-time payment. 

There still is a chance it will appear in a monthly update some time in the future.

Did notice that little 365 'qualification' when the MS tech wrote in to say they were working on it. No, nada, nothing changed on the 2016 QAT though I have the office-auto-update on and noticed it popping up on the test machine today. Was asked to close the Office 2016 apps, did so, let it whir, apply. Restarted system or playing with the resolutions, same gargantuan spacing... back to office 2013 [actually mostly work in 2010... still a waste of money it was, 149 Euros, to even try].

FYI: If you have not already noticed it, MS is pushing out a fix to return the QAT buttons back to 2013 size.  This applies to 365, I don't know if it also applies to standalone 2016.

For people who had problems when the switched from Mouse to Touch and back to Mouse mode, this next link may have a fix for you:

Partial fix QAT buttons not resizing down fully- Change DPI Scaling

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-customize/huge-ribbon-and-icon-size-in-microsoft-office/32fabc50-d6a4-44f5-ae87-b1c332813d22

Francis, while I agree with your concerns, I do want to try to clear up one misconception you have.

You seem to think that individuals are the customer for MS.  Sorry, but MS designed the ribbon specifically for itself and its corporate customers. The QAT was a sop it created for individuals to show that MS "cared" for them.  What has happened with the 2013 QAT, and even more so with 2016, shows how "much" MS cares about supporting this type of user customization.

This article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx  talks about why MS switched from the "totally customizable" menu system to the locked down Ribbon. It was for the benefit of support groups, MS's support and corporate support.

During the 2007 beta, apparently you could add groups to the QAT. (see the image in this link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20101006220612/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2006/03/14/551142.aspx  and see this page: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2006/03/14/551142.aspx ). But I guess that feature did not make it into the final cut.

Even in the original design of the QAT, it was only envisioned to provide MINIMAL opportunity for customimzation:

<Snip http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2006/09/12/750144.aspx >

The Quick Customize Menu is not a revolution—but it's a nice affordance to improve the discoverability of customization for beginner/intermediate users who are most likely to want to add just a few simple commands to their Quick Access Toolbar.

</snip>

If you want to learn more about the (ir)rational that went into the design of the Ribbon for 2007, there is a VERY LONG series of blogs by one of the Managers on the team. This page:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/table-of-contents.aspx

has links to all of the blogs presented in a more rational order than they were originally published in.  It actually makes interesting reading, especially the section on the various iterations they went through, but it is very long and requires a major investment in time if you want to read the whole thing.

I don't understand why Microsoft has not yet solved the problem.  At the end of the quick access bar, one get a choice between the mouse and touch tablet spacing; and yet it does not work since both have the same spacing.  Is Microsoft still trying for tablet mode touching on word 2016---did they not learn from the fiasco of windows 8 vs 7 by overlooking what people want who use a mouse and office monitor.

Actually I feel on this point Microsoft has consistently downgraded office word.  In earlier versions perhaps 2003, one could give a bar a special name and putting quick access buttons there.  In fact, one could have two or three bars that way and one hat a more quick access gbefore the quick access bar came and limited one to one bar; now one is limited to a bar with wide spaces despite the optioins offered -but not working. this should not be two difficult to achieve--the bar points to choices and this can make everyone happy.  What firm does not want everyone of its users to happy with their products. 

Francis