[Stratoscope]

I like the ribbon pretty well, although it was clearly designed in the days of 4:3 displays. Would be nice to have an option to put it on the side instead.

The one thing I really dislike in Office 2013/2016 is the animated cursor. In Word it's just a distraction, but in Excel it is ludicrous: when I click on a cell, I'm looking at that cell, I'm not thinking about the cell the cursor used to be on at all, but for some reason Excel wants to draw my attention back to the previous cell just so I can watch the cursor box move. This is not something to benefit the user, it's a designer screaming "Look at me!"

Fortunately, there is a way to turn off these Office animations and a lot of other animations too. Open the Ease of Access Center in the Windows control panel and select "Make the computer easier to see". There's an option there to "Turn off all unnecessary animations".

This stops the animated cursor and some other animations in Office, and it also turns off the goofy Start menu animation. To my eyes it is a nice improvement.

[ygra]

http://hypftier.de/temp/2016-12-28_230236.jpg might help too, I guess.

[Slackwise]

> although it was clearly designed in the days of 4:3 displays. Would be nice to have an option to put it on the side instead.

I just double-click a menu item to collapse the entire bar, which ends up using the same space as an old school File menu would. Then I tap `Alt` to bring up the shortcut letters and tap them to activate features. It's incredibly fast and essentially modal. Gives me a good Vimy feel.

Office 2013 and newer also has a full-screen mode which hides all the menus and lots of chrome, giving you mostly data. It's the only way to use Outlook and Excel with maximum screen efficiency.

[Stratoscope]

Nice tips, thank you!

[phjesusthatguy3]

> I like the ribbon pretty well, although it was clearly designed in the days of 4:3 displays.

This. The only reason I fire up any Office app these days is if something I'm doing has gone horribly wrong (as in, causing an Office app to be the best tool for the job) but if the ribbon was down the side of the screen instead of the top, I wouldn't be nearly so mad at it.