Quick Access Toolbar Office 2016 Icon Spacing too big

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

I AGREE :

needed features: 1) allow user to customize spacing between QAT icons

2. allow for QAT to use more than one line

The sooner MS will fix this the better, because, as a workaround, I ended up moving some of the icons/macros to Ribbon, which stills requires additional clicks etc.

Thanks

Since the spacing causes so many QAT buttons to drop off the screen, a shortcut macro to show them all, much 'quicker' [pun] than letting your eye search for the >> button (More Controls) and then steer the mouse there, then click.

Sub QuickAccessToolbarExpand() 'Shortcut Ctrl+t

'

    With Application

        .SendKeys ("%"), True

        .Wait (Now() + TimeValue("00:00:01"))

        .SendKeys "00"

    End With

    DoEvents

End Sub

Mind you, the "00" ( the alt code for the >> button) is for my system setup and works for both when no extra tabs as Design is showing as when none are, but if less button are present, maybe the "00" has a different alt code.

NB, Sendkeys is not exactly a reliable function, sometimes the 00 goes to the sheet instead of the QAT. In my case, the True statement had to be omitted to let these keystrokes go to the QAT on a consistent basis and a wait of 1 second to give time to the QAT to show up.

Edit: For the MS developers: If using Alt 00 it becomes very painful to actually see the icons of the bar. The typed black square overlays with 1 or 2 characters to choose the action, overlays the icon to leave about 1 quarter at the top, very hard to see which icon you want. Fortunately it can be blindly trusted for 00 on to mean 'expand the QAT'

(BTW, I'm trying all this on my testbed machine with the Office 2016 interface.)