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
    2020-05-14T11:25:59+00:00

    In my case, using the Touch/Mouse toggle (had to add it to the quick Access toolbar first) mad the icons BIGGER! So that apparently isn't a solution for everyone... :)

    • Robert

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-07-15T14:02:15+00:00

    I have the same problem, all of the ribbons are HUGE and you can't zoom them less than 100%. the ribbon takes up 1/3 of the screen on the top, and when i have microsoft outlook open, the mail folder on the left takes up another 1/3 of the screen, leaving actual room for emails to be unnecessarily small. What gives? is there an update that i can delete to go back to normal?

    Please don't mention touch/mouse mode- I've tried it, doesn't make a difference.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-13T23:39:11+00:00

    As the original author said, those are basic level items and had been tried by him (and myself)

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-04-01T16:01:29+00:00

    I have just purchased Office365 and coming from Office2000 (which is still great by the way), I also find the Ribbon to take far too much of the space at the top of the screen in Excel and Word. To make a long story short, and avoid pointless discussions, I have also fully understood the the original poster mentioned and simply I think the solution is to remove the Ribbon Section titles to leave just the icons [after all that is what icons are for]. This would reduce the Ribbon height by about 20%, which would at least help. In the old days, Microsoft was the sort of company that continuously looked to optimise its products. This would be an easy right-click in the Ribbon area.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-09-22T16:04:39+00:00

    You also can try this:

    Go to Options and under the General try to play with Optimize for Compatibility

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