How to Disable Hardware Acceleration in Microsoft Excel for Office 365

The steps in this guide are going to show you how to turn off the graphics hardware acceleration option in Microsoft Excel for Office 365. We review the steps for this action briefly at the start of this article, then go further into the topic with more information and pictures below.

  1. Open Excel.
  2. Click the File tab at the top-left.
  3. Select Options at the bottom-left.
  4. Choose Advanced.
  5. Scroll to the Display section and check the box to the left of Disable hardware graphics acceleration.
  6. Click the OK button.

You may be interested in disabling hardware graphics acceleration in Microsoft Excel if you find that you are having display or stability issues, or if it feels like Excel isn’t performing as well as it should be.

Many programs will use a graphics hardware acceleration option because, in theory, it should make the application perform better. But this isn’t always the case and, in some instances, can actually make it perform a little worse.

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How to Turn Off Hardware Graphics Acceleration in Excel

The steps in this article were performed in the Microsoft Excel for Office 365 version of the application, but will also work in some of the older versions of Excel as well.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Excel.

Step 2: Select the File tab at the top-left corner of the window.

click the File tab

Step 3: Click the Options button at the bottom-left of the window.

click the Options button

Step 4: Choose the Advanced tab at the left side of the Excel Options window.

select the Advanced tab

Step 5: Scroll down to the Display section, then click the box to the left of Disable hardware graphics acceleration.

how to disable hardware graphics acceleration in Microsoft Excel

Step 6: Click the OK button.

Yield: Disables hardware graphics acceleration in Excel

How to Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration in Microsoft Excel

how to disable hardware graphics acceleration in Microsoft Excel

Find out how to improve display, stability, or performance issues in Microsoft Excel by turning off a setting that uses your computer's graphics hardware to accelerate performance.

Active Time 3 minutes
Total Time 3 minutes

Tools

  • Microsoft Excel

Instructions

  1. Open Excel.
  2. Click the File tab at the top-left.
  3. Select Options at the bottom-left.
  4. Choose Advanced.
  5. Scroll to the Display section and check the box to the left of Disable hardware graphics acceleration.
  6. Click the OK button.

Many of the other applications on your computer use hardware graphics acceleration as well. Find out how to disable it in Chrome if you use that browser and have found that you are having stability or performance issues with that browser.

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