Quick Styles display changed - just an alert

[Charles Kenyon]

This is but another example of someone fixing something that was not broken.

The display of the Quick Styles Gallery in at least Office 365, and I suspect all versions from 2016 on is problematic.
It is discussed in the Word Community Answers forum.
I provide several workarounds (not satisfactory) in my response.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mso ... 497c67c104

I urge anyone experiencing problems because of this to use the feedback mechanism and to post any ideas in that thread.

[HansV]

Aargh! Thanks, Charles!

[Charles Kenyon]

I may have spoken too soon. It appears I told Microsoft that I wanted to see new features even though not in the Insider's program. This is through the "Coming Soon" pane that pops up when they did the update. I give full details in the post.

[HansV]

I have Office 2021. It doesn't have a "Coming Soon" feature, but I still got the new display in the Quick Styles Gallery:

S0901.png

[StuartR]

Thank you, I have turned off "Try the new experience" in coming soon and the ribbon has reverted to the sensible display

[Charles Kenyon]

OK Hans.
What a pain. It makes the Quick Styles Gallery much less useful.
It is surprising to me that it is pushed on the perpetual license version.

[Charles Kenyon]

This has been reported for Word 2016 as well.

[HansV]

Office 2016, 2019 and 2021 and Microsoft 365 share most of the code - Microsoft just switches features on and off depending on the version...

[kdock]

I did not have "try the new experience" turned on and I made liberal use of MSFT's feedback feature to explain why that was not such a good idea. I commented here in a different thread about labels appearing in the QAT and included the checkbox in Options to turn that feature off. Today I can't find that checkbox.

My Styles Gallery looks as it always has. I've never liked or used the Gallery, so I didn't notice it when I first saw labels appearing everywhere, so I don't know whether it was switched on or not. Is it likely that they turned this on for me inadvertently--despite my not opting in--then turned it off when I complained?

Or perhaps someone at MSFT thought it would be a good idea to let everyone enjoy this "new experience" and opt out (without ever knowing what it was)?

As Charles pointed out elsewhere, their new experience is fixing things that ain't broken. Maybe some of these new experiences are intended to aid those with touch screens who navigate the program with their fingers? Or can't stand looking at too many words on a teensy screen?

Kim

[Charles Kenyon]

Hi Kay,

Apparently the new experience is being forced on perpetual licenses Office 2016, 2019, and 2021. This may be a mistake (other than the obvious mistake that this update represents) in that it may only supposed to be on 365. This has happened in the past. Also, apparently those brave enough to have Windows 11 are getting this crammed down their throats, as well.

One of the things the new experience has, which I think is the antithesis of easy touch screen use is skinny scroll bars (like those in FaceBook) that are hard to click on with a mouse, much less a finger! In the meantime, they make other thinks that are already wide enough, wider. They pulled the AutoSave and Save from the QAT and moved them to the Title Bar. They changed ribbon display options as well.

Doug Robbins told me today that there may be a registry fix for some of us. I did not need it because I have the "megaphone."

If you have a machine on which the “new experience” has been rammed down your throat because you do not have the “Announcement Megaphone”, you might try the Registry Fix detailed at

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answer ... wer-635812

[HansV]

Thanks again, Charles.