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
    2016-03-09T06:01:30+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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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-10T19:16:00+00:00

    If you can't change it, then it's because it's read-only. If you right-click on the manifest, it may not show that it's read-only on the Attributes line, but if you have not made it writable, for you, it will not be. That is, if you have not done the following, do it now :-)

    Right-click on the manifest file.

    Click the Security tab on the top of the window

    Click Edit

    On the next window, select your account name

    Check Allow by Full Control

    OK the dialog boxes

    You should be able to edit/save, now.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-09T23:55:48+00:00

    I've now spent 4 hours on the phone with Microsoft Support and they INSIST that this is a problem with my monitors / laptop not the DPI Scaling.  So much so that they won't help me change the manifest settings (I'm blocked from changing them for some reason

    • file is not read-only).  If there is anything that can be done to resolve this and to let the tech support team know the work around in the interim I would greatly appreciate it.  My productivity just went from 100% to 0% due to this issue.  Thanks!

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