Most of us are enjoying the recently released free Customer Preview version of Microsoft Office 2013 (codename Office 15).
Office 2013 comes with many new features and enhancements. Microsoft has tried to make Office 2013 UI matching with Windows 8. Office 2013 features a clean and minimal UI without any Aero glass or blur effects as present in previous Office versions.
Office 2013 also comes with some animations which are shown while typing text, switching between menus, etc. These animations look cool but users with slow computers might not like them.
Today in this tutorial, we are going to share a small Registry tweak to disable animations in Office 2013 applications. It'll help you in improving Office 2013 performance.
So if you are also one of those people who are finding the typing animation and other effects annoying in Office 2013 and want to disable them, just follow these simple steps:
1. Press "WIN+R" key combination to launch RUN dialog box then type regedit and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor and go to following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
2. In right-side pane, create a new DWORD DisableAnimations and set its value to 1 as shown in following screenshot:
3. Close Registry Editor and open any Office 2013 application. Changes are instant and you'll no longer see any animations and effects in Office 2013.
4. If you want to restore default animations, change value of DisableAnimations to 0 or simply delete the DWORD.
PS: If you don't want to modify Registry yourself and want a ready-made Registry script to do the task automatically, download following ZIP file, extract it and run the extracted REG file, it'll ask for confirmation, accept it:
Thanks to our friend Rafael for sharing it...
Posted by: Vishal Gupta | Categories: Microsoft Office
Kyle
i can't seem to find the registry key...
SMBR
That's pretty cool Tip Thnx :)
Trong Kien
I can stand the animations, in fact I love it. But I cant stand the extremely unpleasant chrome-less gray background of every other thing in office 2013 "." it almost hurts my eyes
Typist
Can someone help me? I'm currently running Office 2013 and I find its performance so poor. For example, when I opened an 86-page document in Word, scrolling and typing is so slow. I've already those unnecessary animation but still, it's painfully slow. Additionally, i noticed that every time I scroll in a document, the CPU usage in task manager goes up to 100%. Ridiculous that I get my CPU usage high just because I'm navigating on my document. Please help me, Sir VG.
VG
^^ Try to disable hardware acceleration:
http://www.askvg.com/disable-hardware-graphics-acceleration-and-fix-blurred-font-and-cursor-hanging-problems-in-microsoft-office-2013/
Typist
@VG
I've already disabled hardware acceleration but it's still the same...slow scrolling on my documents.
Guess I'll return to Office 2010 because it's much faster than Office 2013. I wonder what Microsoft have done here.
Ron
Thanks!
That stupid animation was driving me to distraction. It alone was close to enough to keep me from using Excel 2013. It is amazing what simple changes to the software can make.
I had to add the "Graphics" key as well as the "DisableAnimations"
charles
Excellent tip... huge help so far. Thank you. Absolutely exasperating up to now. Thanks again.
ponz
Hello Vishal. Is there any way to make the animations faster? They're really useful but also really slow. I'd prefer not to disable them - if there were any way to make them faster / last less.
Thanks!!
VG
^^ Sorry to say but afaik its not possible.
Randy
Hi Vishal,
I would like to disable animations, but I have question regarding Office 2013 64 bit. I do not use regedit often and when I followed your instructions above I noticed that there is DWORD for 32 bit and QWORD for 64 bit. Since I am running 64 bit Office 2013 would I create the new parameter using QWORD instead of DWORD?
Thank you for the help.
VG
^^ No. You'll need to create DWORD.
Matt
Here's the best part: Word literally loads 3 times faster now. What absolute garbage those animations are, they add nothing and slow things down. Thank god I use Word through my work, I will never buy this on my own.
K.K.VinayKumar
Hi, there askvg staff/team is there any registry hack or any tool to enable aero in Office 2013 so as to match Windows 7 aero style?
VG
^^ No.
SJH
Good tip but I have looked and can't find the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
I get to the common part but there is no Graphics folder to choose????
VG
^^ You can create it manually.
AV
How to add Graphics folder?
VG
^^ Right-click on the Registry key and select New -> Key.
James
Thanks! :)
Ran
Thanks! It didn't slow me down it the first place, but it makes the work so much easier. I think UI\UX:ers are sometimes too focused on their "creation" and "enjoyment" rather on the functionality and usage. I need something that makes my life easier, not a tool to show my friends how I do my work.
The UX:UI should have put effort on how the end result of the person who works on the tool, gets a cool looks, not interrupting me with "hip" moves and other nonsense.
And that's without even mentioning the horrid "hipster" color scheme Microsoft thought about - that makes your eyes work harder and annoys the user greatly.
I really hope some one would hack this color scheme shit as well... (the "dark gray" is not enough)
Ling
Please, I need help...my powerpoint"s poor.
can I get another tips how to boost it?
Thanks Mr. VG...:)
Jb
Thank you so much! I disabled animation and hardware acceleration as you instructed, and now Word 2013 is as fast as its predecessor.