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

Anonymous
2014-09-19T15:57:18+00:00

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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2015-05-18T14:41:20+00:00

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:

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

    <dpiAware>True/PM</dpiAware>

    to

    <dpiAware>False/PM</dpiAware>

  1. 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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  1. Anonymous
    2015-11-10T14:04:03+00:00

    Thank you so much ! I was losing my mind on this one !

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-09T21:42:47+00:00

    Thank you!! I have been searching for a fix for ages and this worked first time. Much appreciated!

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-03T13:33:55+00:00

    I had scaling issues on several external monitors with a Dell XPS 13 only with Powerpoint 2016. TheZar's solution solved the resolution issues on the external monitor. 

    However, now Powerpoint seems to be blurry on the integrated monitor (even in mouse-mode).

    So it was partially helpful, but definitely an improvement.

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  4. 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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