Microsoft Excel 2016 Mac: Smooth cell transition

Question

Changing cells in Excel 2016 Mac by clicking arrow keys results in smooth (i.e., painfully slow) transitions. Is there a way to disable this?

(Note: distinguish this, I think, from 'smooth scrolling')

Answer 1

Update: It's now possible! See the answer from user3076530 on this page.

It appears that this is currently not possible.

This post from the Excel user requests forum shows an official Microsoft response indicating that there is no such preference. This Reddit post documents some unsuccessful efforts to apply solutions that achieve this on Windows, and to search for undocumented plist options that might change the behavior. In particular, Office 2016 lacks the "disable hardware acceleration" option that is available on Windows.

Answer 2

From this post (“Allow users to turn off cursor “glide” animation (cell selection animation)”) on Microsoft's “Suggestion box” site:

Good morning (5 April, 2016),

I’m happy to be able to update that we’ve released an update for this issue in Mac Excel 15.21, which has rolled out to Office Insiders today and pending any blocking issues we find there should start rolling out to everyone in a week or so.

In order to turn off this animation once you have the updated build, you’ll want to go to Excel > Preferences > Edit and uncheck the “Provide feedback with animation” checkbox.

Hope that helps,
Dan [MS]

So the new method is via: “Excel” → “Preferences” → “Edit” and uncheck the “Provide feedback with animation” checkbox.