Disable Excel 2013 cell animation

There is a registry setting that allows you to disable all animations across Office 2013 (thus not affecting other programs). It is explained in simple terms here: [Tip] Improve Microsoft Office 2013 Performance by Disabling Unnecessary Animations. There's a download at the end of the post with the corresponding .reg files to enable or disable animations; just double click on the "disable animations" one.

In summary:

• create the following key in the registry if it does not exist yet: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
• create a new DWORD DisableAnimations in that key and set its value to 1

There's no way to selectively disable some of Office 2013 animations; it's an all-or-nothing proposition. sotong's answer to this question disables all animations across Windows.

EDIT

For those who don't have access to the regedit UI due to user privileges, this can also be done from the command line. Use (Win)+R, run cmd then paste in for Office 2013:

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics ^
/v DisableAnimations /t REG_DWORD /d 1

For Office 2016:

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Graphics ^
/v DisableAnimations /t REG_DWORD /d 1

(all on one line).

Another way to turn off animations in Office 2013, which does NOT involve going into the registry, is as follows (quoted from Excel 2013 built-in help):

"Turn off Office animations

Office 2013 is the first release to use hardware acceleration throughout the user experience to deliver beautiful, fluid animations. But if you use your computer without a display or just prefer to block unnecessary animations, you have the choice to turn them off.

1.Open the Ease of Access Center (shown below) by pressing the Windows logo key + U.

2.Under Explore all settings, click Use the computer without a display.

3.Under Adjust time limits and flashing visuals, click Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible).

4.Click OK."

You can turn off the animation by:

Control panel > System and security > System > Advanced system settings (in upper-left side) > Advanced tab > Settings in Performance box > Visual effects tab:

Uncheck the "Animate controls and elements inside windows."