How Can I Reduce Size of Ribbon Icons & Text in Office 365 / 2016?

Anonymous
2019-09-26T00:38:24+00:00

Since MS Office was updated earlier in 2019 (for me) I have had this stupidly sized ribbon that takes up about double the screen area compared to previous iterations of Office.  I want to reduce it, so do many other people it seems but there seems to be no satisfactory method.

Before answering, please read the following;

  1. I do not want to HIDE the ribbon, I just want the icons / text to be smaller.
  2. I know about the MOUSE / TOUCH setting.  It is already on Mouse and the ribbon is still far too big.
  3. Monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080 on my laptop and secondary screen, there is no option to change monitors.
  4. Text size in the OS is currently set to the recommended 125%  I do not want to change this as I do not want to upset any of my other (many) applications.
  5. This is only a problem caused by the update in MS Office, no other apps are affected.

Will someone at Microsoft please explain how to reduce the childish looking icons and text in the MS Office Suite so that I can recover screen space?

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-06-07T21:20:11+00:00

    The only suitable resolution which I found is to install Microsoft 2019 over the existing installation. That done the ridiculously overszed menu bar items and the tool bar items have been greatly reduced.

    I would image that reverting to Microsoft Office 2016 would achieve the same result, but with the loss of any functionality that was added to 2019.

    I wish MS would at least test products before they venture into making changes that probablly were't wanted or needed anyway. Come on MS... put out beta releases to find the problems before everyone has to go through trying to resolve a problem that shouldn't even exist. "Improvements" are not always improvements and they can cost users hours and hours of valuable time trying to find an answer.

    If it aiin't broke, don't fix it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-14T17:28:09+00:00

    Changing the scaling options worked for me! The log out/log in is necessary to fix this issue. After the 2nd logon, *poof* - Issue gone!

    Did not need to mess with the drivers to fix this.

    Thanks David & Micky. Great find!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-12-03T12:15:43+00:00

    Wow, thank you very much David Wilkinson, this helps!!!

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-10-18T20:16:45+00:00

    Thankyou so much, I have been so frustrated with almost half of my laptop screen taken up with the ribbon!

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-05-13T23:20:39+00:00

    Neha,

    I think what many of us are saying is that we do NOT want to rescale ALL of Windows.  This issue is ONLY in MS Office apps.

    Please clarify how to solve this issue WITHOUT changing the entire system.  If you do not know, please escalate this case.

    Adam

    Adam, as I noted above, my issue was fixed from within the Microsoft office apps themselves (in my case Word and Excel). It sounds like you have the same issue.

    Solution is simple. :) I just toggled on and off between "touch/mouse mode". It's a little finger pressing a button symbol on the top left most corner of the program. It just changes the programs default sizing in the apps. NOT across the whole system. 

    Click here for sreenshots (Google image search results): https://www.google.com.au/search?q=mouse+touch+mode&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiojez2\_LHpAhVpyjgGHZFsBr0Q\_AUoAnoECA0QBA&biw=1281&bih=692

    regards

    Angophora

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