Hello,

What would cause the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) to be so short in Office 2013?

During the past few years using Office 2010, I added a large number of QAT shortcuts in both Excel and Word 2010. Therefore, prior to upgrading to 2013, I went to:

File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar > Customizations > Import/Export > Export all customizations

in each Office application and exported my customization settings to a backup file. Then after installing Office 2013, I reversed the process to import the settings for each app:

File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar > Customizations > Import/Export > Import customization file.

Everything went smoothly but then I noticed that except when the window is maximized, the QAT ended abruptly well before the extreme right border of the application window. In other words, there was a large empty space to the right of the QAT which could easily hold or display 6-10 more QAT shortcut icons and which was never present in Office 2010. Instead, to access those icons, I am now required to take the extra step of clicking the small continuation double arrow to display the second row of the QAT.

In trying to alleviate the problem I did a bit of testing and discovered that oddly enough, the empty or wasted space actually increases as the application window is narrowed. This is illustrated in the following screenshots:

Figs. 1-3.jpg

After hiding the formula bar and column headings and also numbering (in blue) the QAT shortcuts, Fig. 1 shows that with the Excel window just under maximum width (moniter 1920 x 1160 pixels), the QAT displays 54 of a total 65 (see Fig. 2) shortcut icons. Next, when the Excel window is narrowed to about 3/4 of the screen width (Fig. 3), the number of shortcut icons displayed decreases to 36 even though there is plenty of space for 42 or even 43.

Figs. 4-6.jpg

When the window is narrowed to about half the width of the screen (Fig. 4), there is an even larger area of open (wasted) area as only 16 of a possible 27 icons are displayed. Finally, Fig. 5 shows that when the window is narrowed to about 1/4 of the screen width, not even a single icon from the QAT is seen even though all 65 are there (Fig. 6).

Incidentally, I have repeatedly tried (with various search terms in Google) to find information about this issue online but have come up empty. That caused me to wonder if the problem is something specific to my computer. However, other Office 2013 users have informed me that their QAT behaves in the same way. And that of course caused me to wonder if I am the only Office 2013 user who has lots (many more than can be displayed in the width of a screen) of shortcuts pinned to my QAT.

Therefore, I would be very pleased if someone could tell me if this odd QAT behavior is:

a) based on a setting or some other factor which can be modified, or
b) a bug in Office 2013 and if so, why is there no mention of it online, or
c) purposely the intended QAT behavior in Office 2013 — and if so, why?

Thanks