Why do some programs not rescale when moving across monitors on Surface 3?

Anonymous

One of the nice features of the Surface 3 Pro is that in a multiple monitor setup (which I use a lot), windows will scale when I drag them from my primary display to the external one(s). That is, the scaling that is done to increase the size on the high DPI Surface screen is removed when I drag to en external monitor with a lower DPI. Very nice!

But, while this is nice, it doesn't work for all windows programs. Why? My example is, of all things, PowerPoint. Word is fine. Excel is fine, Firefox is fine, so is Thunderbird, Windows Explorer, etc. But when I use PowerPoint on my external monitor, the ribbon bar takes up 10-15% of the screen! Add to that the menu and such and I have less than 75% of my screen for actual work.

Is there anything one can do to fix this?

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Anonymous

Thank you for this pointer. Seems that this does, indeed, fix the problem (for me, at least).

For my setup (Windows 8.1, Surface Pro 3, Office 365 - Office 15) the specific instructions are few and simple:

Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15
Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and change the permission so you can modify the file
Right-click on powerpnt.exe.manifest and open with Wordpad
Change the line

<dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>

Save file

(at least with Office 365, you don't need to do anything in the registry as it's already looking at the external manifest file.)

Yes, line 4 seems counter-intuitive, but it's correct. Once you change this to False, Powerpoint will scale moving from high to lower DPI monitors. I've not encountered any other issues, but I've not used it for very long, yet.

Thanks to the previous pointers/authors for this tip.

(Do read

http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/

if you want more details and the history of this.)

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76 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-10-16T09:36:38+00:00

I had scaling issues on my second screens with Office 2015 Excel and Powerpoint.

TheZar 's solution resolves this. (i.e. I changed the manifest for both apps to contain <dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>)

Now my ribbons stay a sensible size on all screens.

PS make sure you are running office in mouse-mode
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Anonymous

2015-10-10T00:57:19+00:00

Hi Prem,

Sorry the fix doesn't seem to be working for you, I am now on Win 10 too (with Office 16) on a Yoga 3 Pro. The fix still works for me with many different external monitors whether via a USB or an HDMI connection and several different resolutions, however, I have to redo the fix each time I restart the computer. Can you recheck that the change actually took effect or didn't revert in

powerpnt.exe.manifest in C:\ProgramFiles (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16

One of the pluses with Win 10 is that now the task bar is back on the bottom of all the extended screens - this was a problem with Win 8. Not sure if you had that problem too.
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Anonymous

2015-10-09T13:05:59+00:00

Hello There,

I have the Lenovo Yoga 2 and have the exact same problem. I spent hours on the phone with the microsoft guys and unfortunately there is no real fix. The only recommendation they had, was to scale down the resolution on your laptop until it matches the one of your screen. The size of the windows in the resolution setting should visually align. Supposedly, if you buy a monitor that can deal with your laptops super high resolution, this problem will be fixed...

Hope this help

Andreas
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Anonymous

2015-10-09T02:47:18+00:00

Hi,

I am having the same issue and tried changing the dpiAware flag to false. Unfortunately it didn't work for me.

I'm on Win 10 on a Yoga 3 Pro.

My external monitor is an older LCD with a resolution of 1440 x 900 while my Yoga 3 is on 3200 x 1800.

Power point is so big on my external display that just the menu bar and ribbon occupy half the screen.

Actually for me its not just powerpoint, even the save dialog for native windows apps appear huge on my external display.

To think I was actually starting to like Windows 10....
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