Do you enjoy the latest version of Microsoft Office yet? If you do, then you have noticed all those new features and enhancements that have been added to it.
At first sight, Excel 2013 seems to have a more modern and stylish interface with animated movement of the selection box, smooth zooming and fluid switching between menus and worksheets, etc. When I click on a cell in the sheet, the green border of the cell moves smoothly from the current cell to the new one. If I type in a new value in the table, the updates on my spreadsheet are a kind of rolling numbers that go past like in a slot-machine. It looks cool!
But if you have a slow computer you might find the animation annoying because all it will do for you is slow down the working process in the program.
I've surfed different support forums and blogs to share all the discovered solutions with you.
The easiest way - disable hardware graphics acceleration
I've found a nice article that suggests this simple solution. It doesn't affect other programs or Office applications and helps to disable animation with a few mouse clicks.
- Open Excel, click on File, choose Options. You'll see the Excel Options dialog box as on the following screenshot
- Scroll down to the Display section and then tick the box "Disable hardware graphics acceleration"
- Click OK and work in peace with your spreadsheets again.
Disable animation across Office 2013 - edit the Registry
If the animation effects get on your nerves when you are working in other Office 2013 applications, there is a trick how to turn them off across Office 2013 at once. Just follow these simple steps:
- Press Win + R key combination to open the Run dialog box.
- Type "regedit" (without the quotes) in the Open edit box.
- Click OK.
- Now Registry Editor is open. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
Don't worry if you can't find the Graphics key under the Common key, just right-click on the Common key and select New -> Key from the popup menu. A new key is added to the bottom of the list under the Common key and the name is highlighted. Type "Graphics" for the name of the key.
For details, you can take a look at this post. - Right-click in an empty area on the right side of the editor and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value from the popup menu.
- Name that new value "DisableAnimations".
- Double-click on the new value and set the value to 1 in the Value data edit box.
- Click OK.
- Close the Registry Editor.
- Restart your Office application and the animation effects will no longer give a pain in your neck or eyes ☺.
If you start feeling bored without these effects, you can restore default animation, go back into the Registry Editor and change the Value data of DisableAnimation to 0 or simply delete the DWORD.
Turn off Office 2013 animation without the Registry change
There is one more way to turn off animation in Office 2013, which is common practice and widely suggested in the comments to the related articles. It does NOT involve the Registry change.
- Press the Windows logo key + U to open The Ease of Access Center.
- Find the option "Use the computer without a display" and click on it.
- Under Adjust time limits and flashing visuals tick the box "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)".
- Click Apply and then OK.
- Open Office 2013 to see the effect.
It doesn't matter what solution you choose, they all work a treat. Turning the animation off will increase productivity and help you avoid the annoyance. Feel free to pick the solution that works best for you!
It took all of the above to shut off the annoying sliding effects of the graphics. But it's done!
un tout grand merci maintenant Excel fonctionne à merveille
Thanks, solved the problem straight away
Yes! That was SO annoying, but now it goes to the cell I've chosen without thinking about it first.
Thank you!
Thank you. I used the last suggestion as I tend to find pointless animations like this to be annoying and to give the impression that the computer is running slowly.
Thanks!
the annoying lag is fixed now without the registry change, which is not possible in my business network computer.
You are welcome :)
Thank you! that works well. I use the keboard to navigate through the menu bar a lot. and the animations took so long, I couldn't bare it anymore.
Thank you for sharing!
This third and final soluton is so helpful!! Was close to downgrading to excel 10 but this restored my faith.
All around the web the first 2 solutions are suggested...but they don't work (at least on my computer). I edited regedit and changed the option in excel...still had the annoying lag. Then the option in the Ease of Access Center solved it.
agreed - step #3 did the trick.
I still have animation when using "find" between worksheets??
Hello Cat,
Please specify at what exactly moment you have animation.
thank you!!! The sliding effect was driving me nuts. I'm happy it's gone!
If I open a large Excel or open 20 sheets, the ribbons keeps building from left to right slow. All animations settings are applied.
Brilliant. This has been annoying the crap out of me since I upgraded. Stupid Microsoft and their wanky animations.
It helped a lot, thanks...
At first sight, these animations are great, but after 5 minutes, it gets annoying because it starts to steal our attention to the animation, rather than worrying about values and formulas...
You have finally given me hope after a year of pressing buttons and waiting, I can now get back to work. Thanks for an amazing work around!
Booo to MSFT for their poor execution... again.
Thanks a bushel. Worked like clock-work
I tought i was the only one to find that the new ''Features'' of office 2013 were annoying.
However i still would like to know how to remove the fade in effect when switching tabs.
If someone can help me, Send me an email ''Mikhaeldupras@hotmail.com''.
Thank you!
I was recommended to this site by the Mr. Excel forum. I was hoping this would take care of the scrolling effect when a cell with a calculating formula is updated but it doesn't. Does anyone know that fix?
Thank you very much. I used this to turn off the animations in the Office 2016 preview. I'm glad this still works. I felt like I was moving in slow motion before.
I'm trying to turn off the animations when I use the "hot keys" or Alt shortcuts. These changes were successful in turning off all other animations but this. Any idea how those can be turned off... completely defeats the purpose of using a shortcut in the first place
Thanks to GOD for bringing me in to this site :)
Problem solved right away :)
Thank you so much!!
Brilliant! Thank you SO much for this tip! The last one you listed -Ease of Access Center- worked perfectly! Can't thank you enough!
I have tried all 3 options (for Excel 2013) but still have not been able to get rid of the highly annoying animations when I use hotkeys to access ribbons from keyboard.
Please help
I did the Excel - turn off hardware accelerations, then used the Windows-U trick. All good. I don't like "hacking the registry" but wow - MS really needs to stop moving the settings around. I'm using Win 10 now, it took me a while to find this.
Thanks for having a real solution and not "just a registry hack"
I can't find the Graphics folder. Someone could help?
Thanks a mil.You saved me a bundle of frustrations. This works like a charm:-)
Hello. I still have a problem after doing all the 3 steps above. I still can't get rid of the stupid animation when I freeze panes and then when you scroll left or up, there's this animation where the frozen portion are stretched before bouncing back to the correct position. I'd really appreciate it if someone can help me. I'm using Office 2016 (running on Windows 10). Thanks.
Thank you so much!! Finally not dragged down by the selection speed
Thanks for this tip. The rolling motion was not only annoying, but if you have a third party or temp operating your files, you may not want that person to know what cells are being changed.
The registry values seem to have changed at some point. Updates ruin everything. I could not find the reg values you were talking about.
I mucked about and tried to find a similar graphics folder, but was unsuccessful.
I eventually turned off unnecessary animations in the Ease of Access center, which did work. It also turned off the graphical fluff in the rest of the system, which I kind of like.
Thanks!
Great, really great!
The "DisableAnimations" entry in the registry finally fixed the problem for me (W7, Excel Office 2016).
Two thumbs up!
Thanks
AV