As you navigate through the Ribbon toolbar in Microsoft Excel, you might notice that pausing your mouse pointer over any button (like “Merge & Center” or “Conditional Formatting”) triggers a large yellow pop-up box. These pop-ups, officially called “ScreenTips,” provide a detailed explanation of what the button does, sometimes including images or keyboard shortcuts. While helpful for beginners learning the software, experienced users often find these massive tooltips intrusive, as they frequently block adjacent buttons or cover up the top rows of the spreadsheet data. If you know what the buttons do, you can turn these hover reveals off.
How to Disable ScreenTips
Disabling ScreenTips is a global Microsoft Office setting. Turning them off in Excel will also remove them from Word and PowerPoint.
- Open Microsoft Excel.
- Click on the File tab in the top-left corner of the window.
- Look at the very bottom of the left-hand blue sidebar and click on Options. (You may need to click ‘More…’ first to reveal it).
- The “Excel Options” dialogue box will appear. Ensure you are on the General tab in the left-hand menu.
- Look at the very first section at the top, titled “User Interface options.”
- Locate the drop-down menu labelled ScreenTip style:.
- Click the drop-down menu and change the setting to Don’t show ScreenTips.
- Click the OK button at the bottom right of the window.
From now on, you can hover your mouse over any button on the Ribbon for as long as you like, and the interface will remain perfectly clean and silent with no distracting pop-ups.