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
    2021-07-10T00:07:02+00:00

    After trying all previous workarounds THIS ONE SOLVED IT!!!

    Thanks 1000!

    I wonder if it could also be a simple question of being "zoomed" way out. I was able to recreate the problem by zooming out in Excel to 25%, ie

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-06-17T14:00:19+00:00

    Perhaps.  But the question keeps popping up even though I've responded to it several times before.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-06-16T16:13:15+00:00

    And in my case, after tearing my hair out the other day, also is the huge ribbon. When did that change? On my desktop, I have letters and invoices saved so i can find them easily. Never had a problem clicking from the desktop and Word opens up. Now, if I do that, the ribbon covers the top part of my documents, whether it’s the letter or invoices, and renders them useless. I cannot click in my document or, in the case of the invoice, change or fill in my fees. Actually, when I click on the document, it’s 4 or 5 lines above where I need to fill in data. So odd.

    So now after searching, I turned on the Touch/Mouse Mode from the Quick Access bar, enabled mouse mode, and it made very little difference. My documents are still hidden on the top part when accessing from my desktop only, not if I open them directly from the Word app.

    My solution, after hours of frustration, is to just hide the ribbon bar or just show the tabs only. And it did not affect my HP Laptop. Maybe it was the June 9th Windows 10 Update that killed everything. Had to be.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-05-18T18:56:20+00:00

    Microsoft,

          Somehow this changed within the last week.  I have attached a screenshot.  The toolbar, ribbon & sheet tab are too large.

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  5. 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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