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
    2016-02-17T16:56:38+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.)

    Fantastic, this worked for me!!! I have just started having the issue with my Powerpoint not scaling between monitors (even though all other office programs, like outlook, word, excel, work great).  I have a Surface Pro 4 running Office 2016.

    Thanks so much.  For reference to 2016 users, you need to go through a slightly different path:

    Windows (:C) > Program Files (x86) > Microsoft Office > root > Office16

    The rest of the instructions are spot on....after opening in wordpad, I hit cntl+f (to find) and pasted in <dpiAware>True/PM</dpiAware> changed from "True" to "False", hit save, reopened PowerPoint and all works great.

    Thanks for the solution!!!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-03-09T06:01:30+00:00

    This worked for me and my colleagues - PowerPoint was HUGE on our external displays.  I'm running a Dell XPS 13 9350 on windows 10, he's running a Lenovo Yoga 900; both have high res 3200 x 1800 displays connected to 1920 x 1080 external displays.  Had to play around with the security settings on the manifest file in order to save the edited file.  

    Thanks for the solution!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-03-16T16:44:13+00:00

    Hi Dan,

    I wanted to thank you for your explanation! 

    What does the "manifest editing fix" causes when i connect my laptop to a projector or other screen?

    And one last question, are you aware that this same DPI scaling issue is also found with Internet Explorer. When i drag and drop IE to my external screen the menu bar is not scaling accurate. Is there any comparable fix for this? In the manifest of IE? And if so, can you tell me where to find this file?

    Kind regards,

    Jonas

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-03-30T20:32:13+00:00

    Same here! Yoga 3, so the file is where you indicated, and this fix works. Thank you!

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