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Is there anything more frustrating than typing lag or slow-loading documents when you’re on a deadline? Unfortunately, while Microsoft Office (now known as Microsoft 365) is one of the most widely used application suites for all kinds of projects in the modern office, it doesn't always show excellent performance.
When Microsoft Office slows down, showing you spinning wheels and requiring long wait times, it breaks your flow and concentration, ultimately affecting your productivity.
Complete the given below instructions to disable the mini toolbar in Microsoft Office 2010 and 2013 programs. Turn off the mini toolbar in Office 2013 and 2010. NOTE: Turning off the mini toolbar in Word program will not disable the same feature in Excel or PowerPoint. Step 1: First step is to open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint program.
The Mini Toolbar in Word 2013 pops up when you select text in a document and provides quick access to formatting tools. Live Preview allows you to preview how a specific feature, such as style sets, will affect your document as you hover over the different choices for that feature. Download Office 2013. Download and install Office 2013 using an existing product key. A Microsoft 365 subscription unlocks the most up-to-date premium version of Word on all your devices. Previous versions include Word 2013, Word 2010, and Word 2007. A new dictation toolbar with voice commands for creating content with your voice is coming to Word and Outlook for Mac. In addition, to help you check spelling, correct grammar, and get writing style suggestions, we will enable Microsoft Editor in Word for Mac. We plan to make these updates available to customers with access to Microsoft 365. To use the Mini toolbar, select the text you want to format and then click an option on the toolbar. If you don't want to see the Mini toolbar, you can turn it off as explained next. Turn off the Mini toolbar In your Office application, click File Options General.
Thankfully, there are a few proven ways to speed up Microsoft Office on your Mac, and most of them are as simple as tidying up. If Marie Kondo has taught us anything, it’s that clutter can cause unnecessary stress in life. And this applies to hard drives as well!
Why is Microsoft Office slow?
While there are a few different symptoms indicating that Microsoft Office isn’t doing its best, such as a painfully slow opening of a program or Microsoft Word slow typing, the question stands: why is Microsoft Word so slow?
There are a variety of reasons Microsoft Office may run slowly, freeze, or cause the much-dreaded typing lag. Often, the issue stems from a build-up of corrupted or temporary files that are meant to be automatically deleted but, for whatever reason, have failed to do so. Of course, the application suite could also be out of date or attempt to load corrupted files. But, very likely, it’s just a large number of small problems that have snowballed and are now causing noticeable issues. Here’s how you can fix it.
Refresh go-to templates
The template file normal.dot is created by Microsoft Word and stored automatically on your computer. It saves all the default settings of the application. So each time you change your settings, the preference is added to normal.dot. This way, the next time Microsoft Word opens a new document, your preferred settings load automatically. However, if your normal.dot file becomes corrupted or too complex to load, it can make Microsoft Word slow.
Deleting the existing normal.dot file will force Microsoft Word to create a new one. Starting fresh will be easy for most users, as most of us don’t stray too far from the default settings. However, for those who change their default settings in complex ways, make sure you back up your normal dot files to a flash drive to avoid losing important settings permanently.
To find and delete normal.dot manually:
- Quit MS Word and open Finder.
- Type normal.dot into the search field.
- Wait for all results to load. It’s not uncommon to have more than one normal.dot file. They may also appear as normal.dotm.
- Select all normal.dot and normal.dotm files and delete them.
- Empty your Trash.
Finally, reload the application and see if the process has managed to speed up Microsoft Word.
Delete temporary files
All Microsoft Office programs will create temporary files to prevent you from losing your work. However, if the automatic removal of these files fails, they can build up and make Microsoft Office slow.
You can easily seek out and remove these files:
- Determine which temporary files you want to delete. Microsoft’s website lists different types of temporary files that Microsoft Office produces automatically. The files you are looking for will be searchable using the trine sign ~*.doc, ~*.dot, or ~*.tmp.
- Use Finder to search for files with ~*.doc or another marker.
- Select files to delete.
- Drag them to the Trash and empty it.
Once you are done, reload the application to see if that did speed up Microsoft Word.
Keep Microsoft Office updated
Having an outdated version of Microsoft Office will eventually cause it to run slowly. Luckily, updating the suite is very easy:
- Open Microsoft Word.
- In the top toolbar, select Help and click “Check for Updates.”
- Install the update if there is one.
Additionally, you can turn on Microsoft auto-updates using the same dialogue box so that whenever Microsoft Office detects a new version, it will offer you an opportunity to install it.
Another way to update Microsoft Office is to download the latest one from the Microsoft website directly. But before you do, check that it’s fully compatible with your version of macOS.
Reset the application to default settings
Over time, all Mac apps accumulate lots of unneeded preferences that constantly rewrite each other. A good way to rule out that there’s anything wrong with the app is to do a factory reset — bring the app back to the state when it was brand new.
You can do a factory reset in two ways:
- Go to Finder.
- Press Shift-Command-G to open the Go to Folder menu.
- Enter
~/Library
and click Go. - Look for Microsoft Office files in the results.
- Delete all of them but the app itself.
Alternatively, you can do the same thing quicker and more thoroughly with the CleanMyMac X uninstaller utility:
- Download CleanMyMac X with a free trial.
- Go to the Uninstaller tab.
- Select Microsoft Office and choose Reset.
- Click on the Reset button.
Delete and reinstall Microsoft Office
The old IT adage “have you tried turning it off and back on?” applies here, but in this case, it’s about deleting the application and reinstalling it. To completely delete Microsoft Office, you will need to remove files from two different places on your computer: delete the app first and then find your Library folder in Finder to see the associated files that need to be removed.
- Head to the Applications folder and move Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365 to the Trash.
- Press Shift-Command-G and navigate
~/Library/Containers
- From Containers, move the following associated files to the Trash:
- com.microsoft.errorreporting
- com.microsoft.Excel
- com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocess
- com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2
- com.microsoft.Outlook
- com.microsoft.Powerpoint
- com.microsoft.RMS-XPCService
- com.microsoft.Word
- com.microsoft.onenote.mac
- Open the Group Containers folder as well and remove the following files:
- UBF8T346G9.ms
- UBF8T346G9.Office
- UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost
- UBF8T346G9.ms
- Finally, remove Microsoft Office from the Dock and restart your Mac.
Once removed, head back to the Microsoft website, sign in to your account, and install the latest version.
Optimize documents for storage
Keeping Microsoft Office functioning properly means saving documents in their most optimized state. Resizing large images or graphics and not overloading your files with macros will help you maintain speedy performance in the long run.
Speed up Microsoft Office automatically in minutes
While all the above maintenance will help you speed up Microsoft Office, it can be time-consuming and finicky. Troubleshooting your app version, deleting and refreshing templates, and searching for temporary files is manual work and could eat up a few hours.
Ms Word Mini Toolbar
To make things easy, you can use optimization software like CleanMyMac X, which will automatically detect and remove temporary and unused files to get your Microsoft Office running smoothly. Here’s how to do it:
- Download CleanMyMac X.
- Drag it into your Applications folder.
- Open it and run a general Smart Scan to start.
- Then run Optimization and Maintenance scans (which you can choose from the left-side panel) to target specific areas, such as freeing up RAM and reviewing your login items.
- Repeat the process every month or so.
Microsoft Word Toolbar Icons
While following the above method of optimizing your Mac with CleanMyMac X is enough to remove any unnecessary clutter, the app’s sidebar menu offers even more options for increasing your Mac's speed and a handy uninstaller for quick and thorough uninstallations of apps you don’t need anymore.
Ultimately, there are several ways to get Microsoft Office to run smoothly again. And although it’s entirely possible to manually do most of the cleanup manually, using an app like CleanMyMac X is a much faster and easier way to get rid of junk and ensure that your Mac performs at top speed.
Most of the blog posts that deal with customizing the toolbars on Microsoft Office products are written for PC users. Now that MS Office has become the standard for office applications on the Apple Macintosh OS, too, let’s discuss how to customize the Excel toolbar on a Mac. Please note that these instructions are for the Office 2016 version of the software.
Add/Remove Commands to the Ribbon Toolbar
To access the configuration screen for the Ribbon toolbar, open a new workbook in Excel and then go to the Preferences menu and select Ribbon and Toolbar. The screen that comes up is of the double list box variety. If you’re unfamiliar with this type of screen, basically you have two boxes with buttons in between them that have arrows facing in opposite directions. You can move items in either of the lists back and forth to the other by selecting an item from the list you want to move the command from and then hitting the arrow button of the direction you wish to move it to.
You can also change the order in which the commands appear by dragging them up or down the list as you wish. There are also drop down list controls at the top of each box so that you can select which category in the toolbar that you want the command to come from or go to. This gives you the most flexible interface for customizing the ribbon toolbar any way you desire. Below is an example image of the Ribbon Toolbar configuration screen.
Adding/Removing Toolbar Tabs or Groups
By default, when you open the toolbar configuration screen, it opens with a list of the main tabs in the right-hand box and a list of available commands in the left-hand box. To access the other tabs, you can select another category from the Customize the Ribbon drop down list. If you want to create your own tabs or groups that contain a custom list of commands, you can create a new tab by clicking the + button at the bottom of the Ribbon Customization list box and selecting New Tab or New Group from the context menu that appears.
If you decide that there are too many tabs and they are cluttering up your user experience, then you can select the tab you want to go away and then select the – button at the bottom of the Ribbon Customization list box. If you want to rename the tab or group, select it in the list and then can click the gear button to the right of the – button. This will give you the settings context menu that will allow you to make changes.
Quick Access Toolbar Customization
If you wish to configure the Quick Access Toolbar, which is the one at the very top left-hand corner of the application, you need to select the Quick Access Toolbar option on the right of the toolbar selection bar. Then you can select from the commands list box on the left and add any commands that you use consistently.
The Quick Access Toolbar is designed to house commands that you can access quickly without having to hunt for them inside other toolbars, tabs, or groups. This toolbar is for things like saving and printing and other regularly used file commands. You can even create custom macros and commands and add them to the Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon Toolbar if you like.
Being able to customize the Excel toolbar on a Mac is a little different than on a PC, but Microsoft has made great strides in making the applications more consistent, robust, and easier to configure for both platforms. They’ve worked on making them look and behave similarly, too, since now most people use both platforms. This is very different from 10 years ago when most people were in either one camp or the other.
No matter which platform you use, you can always benefit by getting trained on Microsoft Office. Explore the many training classes offered by ONLC today.