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
    2015-06-15T15:33:44+00:00

    TheZar, many many thanks! I just got a Dell XPS13 with the 3200x1800 pixel display running Windows 8.1, and this was driving me crazy!

    Does Microsoft know about this fix? I just got off the phone with their tech support, and they were trying to tell me that I would have to wait for the next Office 365 (Office 15 / 2013) update, and they didn't know when that was going to happen.

    For reference, I did change my security settings as suggested, to  modify the manifest file. Having made the change, the fix seems to work fine with the security settings returned to previous values.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-06-10T09:33:17+00:00

    Hi, 

    The below did not fix my problem, does anyone have another solution to this problem?

    Best Regards

    Emelie

    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.)

    Was this answer helpful?

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-05-19T20:20:56+00:00

    Thank you! This is exactly what I needed. This fixed my Dell XPS 13. So simple!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-05-19T19:03:21+00:00

    This also worked with a Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro running 8.1 and PowerPoint 2013.

    Kudos!

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