August 6, 2012

Office 2013: Disable transition and cursor animations

Issue

When using Office 2013 you have all kinds of nice animations when moving around in the applications. E.g., in Excel 2013 you can see smooth animation of cell selector moving from cell to another. In Word/Excel/Outlook/PowerPoint 2013, you can see cursor smoothly moving when typing text, or in Outlook, there is transition animation when you move between Mail and Calendar. In some scenarios these neat new animations are not desired. Good thing is that one can easily disable them.

Solution

  1. Right click on My Computer icon on the Desktop and choose Properties option OR just hit Win+Pause
  2. In the System window click the Advanced system settings link in the left pane
  3. Click Continue button if prompted by UAC
  4. Now click Settings button under Performance section
  5. Select the Custom and check the option Animate controls and elements inside windows to enable animations
  6. Click OK button
  7. Click OK button in the System Properties window

Another solution

The above solution affects all animations across all applications. In order to only limit this within Office 2013, do as Paul instructs and add the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics]
"DisableAnimations"=dword:00000001


To see the effect, you’ll need to reboot your computer. To reverse the effect, change the value of the added DWORD to its default of 0.

97 comments:

  1. This is just what I was looking for after installing Word 2013. Thank you, Jusi!

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  2. Great - this is exactly what the doctor ordered!

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  3. The list of things to make Office 2013 look like Office 2010 keeps growing. First it was the all white background (now has "Light" and "Dark" gray options), then it was returning the ALL CAPS TITLES back to normal. Now this...what's next? My urge to go back to Office 2010 is slowly dying but I still have my gripes.

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  4. Great tips bro thanx for the info

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  5. Thanks for the tip.

    I did find the animation, although nice, lags a bit when moving from cell to cell. Turning the animation off increases productivity and avoids annoyance.

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  6. Thank you for saving me from getting motion sick every time I tried to use the new Excel.

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  7. Thanks, now I can type again and sharply see each character appearing instead of a smooth movement that takes away a lot of visual feedback when typing.

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  8. A faster way is to just disable hardware graphics acceleration in any of Office's programs.

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  9. Thanks! you saved my life, it was so annoying that I was about to uninstal office 2013

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  10. Excellent, now I can use Excel without getting uptight with the cursor flying about between cells. What a waste of effort writing code to do that.

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  11. Gotcha! my problem has been solved. Thanks for this post. Cheers

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  12. Thanks. The animation when slecting cells in Excel almost drove me crazy...

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  13. Thank you so much! Greatly appreciated!!!

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  14. Thanks for the tip. I don't think you need to restart your computer after creating the registry entry however, it just took a restart of Office for me.

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  15. Thanks for the tip. The slow animation in Excel for all the cells changing values was so annoying, like being hung-over and watching the display on a gas station pump tick over.

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  16. lol. Thank you sir. Once again, MS was pissing me off.

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  17. Thank you. Who wants these animations when doing serious work in Excel ?

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  18. Great tip. Thanks! I touch type, and watching the cursor constantly lagging behind my input was making me feel ill and headachy. I know that sounds extreme, but it was certainly true for me.

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  19. Thanks Jussi! Thanks to you, after installing the new M$ Office to my work computer, I can finally work again.

    Thanks a bunch, helpful blog.

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  20. Thank you very much for the information this helps. Microsoft Office keeps on writing Code to make our machines look cool to kids, but it totally drive the rest of us insane.

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  21. Thank you so much! This animation stuff was driving me nuts...

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  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  23. Hey, that works! Thank you! Pointer movement in Office 2013 was pretty annoying for me...

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  24. Thanks to you and especially to Paul for the registry hack! :)
    I simply can’t understand the mysterious ways of the designers of Office 2007, 2010, 2013… They put some good stuff (quite a small amount of it) in every new version, and crap the usual “normal” user experience.
    Why are they changing/disabling good things?!
    I’ve spent half an hour searching (using Office since 1990 – it was only Word back then) for the setting to turn off the animation feedback – to no avail. Grrrr!
    For something that was just one check box click in previous versions, now we must edit Registry.
    Unbelievable! That is what is happening when there are no good competition of the market – making changes just for the sake of the change.
    Pure L'art pour l'art! :@ :(

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  25. Of course, if you ask a coder how to fix this problem, he's going to give you a coding solution.

    Instead, you can just follow the instruction of a Microsoft reviewer to turn it off by clicking one button in Excel.

    http://www.accountingweb.com/article/how-disable-worksheet-animation-excel-2013/221223

    Figure 1, click on File, choose Options, and then Advanced. Scroll down to the Display section and then enable the Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration setting. Think of this as the "turn off the bells and whistles, please" option. Click OK and settle into working in peace with your spreadsheets again.

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    Replies
    1. This does not turn off the animations. Disabling hardware acceleration only improves the performance if you're using an "older" pc.

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  26. Of course, if you ask a coder how to fix this problem, he's going to give you a coding solution.

    Instead, you can just follow the instruction of a Microsoft reviewer to turn it off by clicking one button in Excel.

    http://www.accountingweb.com/article/how-disable-worksheet-animation-excel-2013/221223

    Figure 1, click on File, choose Options, and then Advanced. Scroll down to the Display section and then enable the Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration setting. Think of this as the "turn off the bells and whistles, please" option. Click OK and settle into working in peace with your spreadsheets again.

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    Replies
    1. This solution did not solve the problem for me.

      Delete
  27. Changing the Advanced Option actually sets a different registry value from the one suggested here, and from what I can tell may negatively impact the UI performance for the application as a whole.

    The proposed registry fix works a treat. Cheers :)

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  28. Excel 2013
    New workbook
    Add values 1 to 100 by column
    Hold down right arrow, 52.5 Seconds to get to 100 from 1.
    safe mode had no change, neither did disabling hardware acceleration.

    Added this key, did the same thing,
    22.5 Seconds, still slow as hell, but better.

    Excel 2010 over RDP window: 4 seconds.

    This isn't my hardware, wtf microsoft, too good for QA?

    WTF?!!??!

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  29. Thank you! The Excel 2013 default transitions were nauseating!

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  30. Woaah thx!!! So happy! That was fuckin annoying!

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  31. You are a savior! I suffered from motion sickness and almost vomited on my keyboard after looking at the gliding cursor for a few minutes.

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  32. Thanks.
    I have quite a list of defaults for Office 2013 to become usable. :D

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  33. EASIER YET: From within an Office 2013 program (e.g., Word), (1) click on the ? icon at the top of the screen; (2) in the search box, type "animation"; (3) in the resulting dialog box, click on the topic "turn off Office animations"; (4)follow the directions in the resulting dialogue box -- you'll have it done in a couple of clicks. WHAT A BAD IDEA for them to "use hardware acceleration throughout the user experience to deliver beautiful, fluid animations", when in fact, they significantly slow down all processes, and are distracting to the point of being disorienting. You will love the return to snappy, immediate results!

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    1. ***THIS WORKS***

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    2. Interesting that MS directs you to click on "Use the computer without a display" which makes absolutely no sense unless you're blind. The option to Turn off animations is also under "Make it easier to focus on tasks." This option should not need to exist. Why MS do you insist on making it harder to focus on tasks?

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    3. Thanks! Works great!!

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    4. Better than every method written thus far:
      1. Hold down the “Windows Logo” key and click the “U” key.
      2. Click “Make it easier to focus on Tasks”
      3. Click the box next to “Turn off unnecessary animations”

      You will once again enjoy the “snappy response” of a new computer!

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  34. Many thanks! I have a room fill of people who are now very very happy! Great info.

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  35. THANKS!! That's just what I needed, saved the day/week/year

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  36. PERFECTO. Odiaba esa transición que hacía el Excel de una celda a otra!!!

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  37. Thank you thank you thank you! The smooth cursor movement was driving me crazy! (It's apparently a very short trip)

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  38. HOLY COW! This thread saved my life! Can't tell how annoying the smooth movements are, especially in Excel.

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  39. You are my new hero! Why computing has to embrace the cartoon - techno nightclub spazziness of the "app" generation is beyond me. But the animated delayed "slide" of the cursor in excel was driving me nuts.

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  40. Thank you! One paragraph in of that smooth typing and I was motion sick...

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  41. Just what I needed, thanks!!

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  42. Thanks! Helped a lot :)

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  43. Thank you SOOOOO much! I was trying forever to eliminate the "slow cursor" within Excel. Stupid of me not to try somewhere totally different. Thank God for Google.

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  44. dude - you're the man!!!!

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  45. Moved to Office 2013 for Outlook : Outlook 2010 is ugly, 2013 is quite pretty. Very unpleased to find this 'animated selection' garbage in excel though, and double-unplussed to find that you actually have to edit the registry to turn off this ridiculous feature. The feature makes excel feel very slow. It doesn't seem to do much else. And it's not slow, just the shit animation makes it look slow.

    Very silly.

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  46. Oh, dear heaven thank you! I was getting motion sick.

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  47. Thank you. It bugged me for so long

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  48. Thank you!! I was getting sea sick. Glad to have found this. (Why did Microsoft do this? What were they thinking?)

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  49. First solution worked. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! Maraming salamat!

    Didn't try the alternate solution.

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  50. Open Ease of Access Center (Win+U) -> Scroll to the bottom. Click "Make it easier to focus on tasks" -> Check box for "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)". Click OK. This worked for me to eliminate the cursor animation in Word and Excel.

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  51. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!!! wonder why would anyone want animation turned on ???? it is like asking to be punched in the face

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  52. Thank you for this. I nearly had to will to live after finding that moving to cell to cell was like moving tons of brick from cell to cell.!

    Thank you.

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  53. Jelly baby for this guy. Thank you for saving my mental health.

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  54. Thank you! FYI you don't need to reboot your computer after you add the Registry key; you just have to restart word/excel. Cheers.

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  55. Thank you for helping solve a major irritant I had with Excel since I upgraded to 2013. I was OK with the smooth movement in email, Word, etc., in fact liked this feature there, but not in Excel when it almost prevented me from selecting / dragging only the cells I wanted.
    You do the user community a great service with such answers.

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  56. *****THANKS SO MUCH*****

    it is the only thing I may say.. . .such a stupid animation !! Word it is ok, ...but Excel ...drove me crazy !!! Again , thanks sooooooooo much, from the bottom of my heart ! .-)

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  57. Thank you so much!

    Yet more 'Look what our newby just did. Ain't it keewwwlll!' behaviour from the Redmond Cowboys...

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  58. Thanks mate, you saved my life and I do not have to return to Office 2010.

    Best regards from Hungary.

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  59. It's a real shame that MS decided to put cursor animations IN and leave window shadows OUT (I cannot count the one-pixel wide thing they have).
    It's also a shame that a registry tweak is needed - I cannot change the registry on my work PC as it is locked down.

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  60. Thanks for this post.

    After Windows XP and Office 2007, nothing of Microsoft Products interested me.

    Win 7 has a bad colored taskbar (no focus for the current application).

    Win 8 is about tiling and more annoyance.

    Office 2013 is about pain to the eyes through the fadng out colors.

    The tabs in Internet Explore 11 do not have a focus color! And saving a page defaults to the messy .htm/.html option instead of the more neat .mht (and there is no neat way to change the default).


    Office 2013 should be called the Fading Out, Pain-To-Eyes Office!
    After Windows XP

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    1. then go ahead and live in the 90's and get left behind.

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    2. this is about production and work. I have trouble with the new graphics and how they drain energy and productivity and all you can offer is something crude and irrelevant.

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  61. THIS IS PERFECT!!! The experience of using Office 2013 changes completely with this.

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  62. Thank you very much. Turning annoyances off is a great option for increasing productivity.

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  63. A thank you from me too. I really don't understand MS, their beta testers must all be geeks that love this kind of clever trickery and exclude real human users who just want to get on with the job. Companies that ignore real customers make losses and eventually disappear.

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  64. Thank you for posting this and thank you to google for putting it at the top. Glad to be back to the keyboard feedback I am used to.

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  65. Thank you. I work permanently from home via remote desktop (so data all saved on server in the office), and having just moved to office 2013, my productivity in excel seriously dropped due to slow scrolling. The suggestion right at the top sorted it for me!

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  66. Thanks a TON!
    The animations were driving me mad.

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  67. Thank you for the tip. This is really a big thing when you use excel 8h daily. I became physically ill and lightheaded after a day in the office with the cursor animation. How stupid to add such a feature in professional software.

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  68. Was feeling sick every time I used Excel. This is a great tip!

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  69. Seems like MS could save a lot of money by firing the interface engineers who did Office 2010/13. I have to spend an inordinate amount of time configuring each version of Office to some version of reasonable before I can roll it out to my workstations.

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  70. Thanks Jussi!! Now I can work again...

    Best regards from Switzerland

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  71. I was beginning to think I was the only person who was getting motion sickness from using MS Office. Thank you so much for this tip.

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  72. Restarting Office is sufficient. No need to restart your computer.

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  73. Just another reason to believe that M$ management are smoking some really good stuff. I'm glad I held off putting 2013 on my work laptop for this long. It isn't getting anywhere near any machine I personally own.

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  74. Very useful. Thank you! For me restarting all Office applications was sufficient.

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    1. This guy should have a bitcoin address for donations. I should have thought of this but did not!!! awsome. Now my 'classic' desktop is almost classic again. Now if firefox would stop trying to be like chrome.

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  75. Thank you. I HATED the typing animation but when I opened Excel I just could not work with clicking and smooth drag on cells and had to find this. Now I can work in peace.

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  76. Epic, it was driving me nuts! Thanks!

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  77. Thanks Jussi for the solution,
    I recently installed Office 2013 and this animation was telling on my nerves.
    Your tip has worked.

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  78. For those who don't/can't edit their registry:

    Control Panel > Ease of Access Centre > Make it Easier to Focus on Tasks > Turn Off All Unnecessary Animations

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