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
    2019-09-26T08:25:09+00:00

    Thanks for replying.

    The problem is most significant in Excel where I am losing around 2-3 spreadsheet rows at the top of the screen, plus another one at the bottom due to the thicker borders when compared to an installation of Office 2010 I have on an older personal PC.  Similar problem was seen in Outlook, but I don't have an older installation to compare against. The ribbon height is not an issue in MSWord

    This is especially painful when I am using multiple Excel workbooks tiled horizontally.

    I am running 1902 (Build 11328.20420).  If I click check for updates, this is telling me it is fully up to date.

    I have seen many other complaints on this topic, so any help you can give would benefit others.

    Product Info

    Screenshots below were taken on two different PC's both running Windows 10 set to 1920 x 1080 resolution with the same 125% scaling.

    Excel 2010

    Excel 365 (3 rows less)

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-09-26T03:08:14+00:00

    Hi Paul,

    Thanks for posting in our forum.

    From your post, I understand after updating Office, the size of the ribbon icons and the font has been increased and it is taking the large amount of screen area as compared to the earlier version.

    On my end, I tested with the latest version of Monthly channel 1908 (Build 11929.20300) to check if seem the same behavior, the ribbon icon and the font size looks same as before. Here’s the screenshot for your reference:

    Since you are getting the issue, may I request for the following information to troubleshoot the issue?

    1. Please provide us with a screenshot of Office 365 Product Information. To get this screenshot, open any Office app such as Word or Excel on your system, click File>Account, capture the screenshot of all the information mentioned under Product Information. (Note: please remove any sensitive information from the screenshot such as email address or full name etc.).
    2. Do you see the same behavior in all Office apps?
    3. A full screenshot of a document showing increased ribbon icons and font size.

    Thanks,

    Neha

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