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
    2015-05-16T06:24:44+00:00

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-05-16T05:15:50+00:00

    I am having the exact same issue with PowerPoint being giant on my external monitor. I can't understand why all the other Office programs would scale normally from monitor to monitor except this one.

    As for why PPT only, I suspect that is because all of the Office programs started as totally independent developments in the 1980's and 90's.  It wasn't until the early 1990's that the "Office Bundle" concept was introduced by marketing that they were all sold in the "same box".  That means they were written in different ways.  That underlying difference continued even when they changed from DOS to Windows and from Windows 3 to Windows NT and even from the menu to the ribbon.   In the Office 2007 development blog I even saw comments by one manager who said the teams were allowed to effectively do their own thing for placement of buttons and command names so that the ribbons on the various applications were not the same. 

    So, I suspect that somewhere in the very ancient roots of PowerPoint there is something unique that messes up the scaling. Finding, and fixing it would probably be a huge effort.  Since so relatively few people are complaining about it, the fix is unlikely to happen ... unless it is coincidental with some other change.

    If you are curious about the ribbon development here is the blog:

    Jensen Harris 2007 Blog - Ribbon UI rationalizations

    Microsoft’s traditional Windows and Office interfaces have grown more complex and inscrutable over time. (Microsoft always claims it conducts extensive user interface research, but still revamps the UI every chance it gets. It must be using a different species of alien each time.) In a touch-oriented environment, rows and rows of small, undecipherable icons just don’t work. Someone at Microsoft seems to have realized that, and perhaps Office for ARM will be truly usable. That alone could move many users away from the “heavy” x86 version of Office and, thus, Windows.

    **Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog** - A LOT of reading, it provides insights into the design of the Ribbon and the underlying (il)logic of the design.

    http://abc.salem.consulting.home.comcast.net/~abc.salem.consulting/services.html - A PDF collection of the blogs, easier to read than the original blogs (257 pg). There is a button on the bottom of the page to download the PDF.

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/table-of-contents.aspx This is an organized Table Of Contents to a large collection of links to MS Dev Team Blogs about the design and building of the 2007 ribbon.

    Why the Ribbon

    Why the ribbon, in Word 2003 and earlier MS Stats show:

    • only 13% of commands/ features are actively used
    • of new feature requests, only 6% did NOT already exist

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-05-15T23:22:06+00:00

    I have a Dell XPS 13, that I just bought this month. I am having the exact same issue with PowerPoint being giant on my external monitor. I've tried every setting I can think of and nothing helps. REALLY need a fix for this as I work on a lot of PowerPoint presentations? Any updates? I can't understand why all the other Office programs would scale normally from monitor to monitor except this one.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-04-08T18:45:41+00:00

    I am using the Yoga Pro 3, Win 8.1 and same problem on both my external monitors (a Gateway and an LG) with PowerPoint and IE not scaling properly, not a problem with Photoshop, Chrome, or MS Word, Excel or Visio.   I am stuck working on PowerPoint on the 13" screen which defeats the purpose of the external monitors.  I do not have this problem with any other laptop including several Dells and a Yoga 13 which have lower resolution screens. 

    Worse yet, when I right click on something on the external monitor the menu shows up on the laptop screen and the task bar is only on the laptop screen too (also a known problem).  Are you having this problem on the Surface Pro too?

    I have tried every setting change I can think of and updated drivers with no change.  If you duplicate the external monitors rather than extend, it causes the laptop monitor resolution (which is 3200x1800) to decrease to lowest common resolution making PowerPoint huge on all the monitors.

    I agree with DaveZ that this scaling problem has been out there for awhile on the boards and Shiho_P from Microsoft is either being very disingenuous in pretending to not understand this issue or I don't know what to say.  

    I think if you had a very high resolution external monitor it would be fine but that is a ridiculous solution, if it even is a solution. If the other MS products work fine, why can't Microsoft fix PowerPoint?  Especially since they are slowly transitioning to an all subscription service that supposedly means we always have the latest updates.  Very disappointing Microsoft - are you listening?

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