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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-03-08T14:26:16+00:00

    Thank you jaymee_marie! This worked! Thank you for posting the answer.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-03-07T16:15:43+00:00

    Why does everyone keep mentioning the Mouse of Touch when people are stating over and over it does not work? It's just frustrating when someone says a fix isn't working and people keep suggesting they use it. Seems I am going to have to search the web for a solution because there isn't one on this website. I hope someone finds a useful solution that actually works, and they will post.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-01-06T02:05:13+00:00

    Hi pajbennett

    Bor, awesome. Superb. Whole world has become mad taking this issue. Technical experts were unable to solve this problem. I uninstalled Office 365 just because of this issue. But when I followed your advise, I realised, how easy was the solution. Awesome man. Thumbs Up.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-12-17T15:06:09+00:00

    Hi Angophora -

    This does not fix the issue for me. 

    Microsoft - 

    I have the same issue and scaling does not fix the issue for me. I realize that is the official Microsoft solution, but it does not work nor does it address the issue at the root cause. If scaling were the solution, I could select below 100% - which is not an option. Microsoft needs to come up with actual fix.

    The icons take up way too much space - especially in Outlook and the new email window. 

    Did you try changing the custom scaling to 200%, restarting the computer, resetting it back to 100%, and then restarting?  Apparently, these settings "get stuck" and needed this to "wake them up."  After trying everything else, this worked perfectly for me.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-12-17T14:43:49+00:00

    Hi Angophora -

    This does not fix the issue for me. 

    Microsoft - 

    I have the same issue and scaling does not fix the issue for me. I realize that is the official Microsoft solution, but it does not work nor does it address the issue at the root cause. If scaling were the solution, I could select below 100% - which is not an option. Microsoft needs to come up with actual fix.

    The icons take up way too much space - especially in Outlook and the new email window.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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