Windows Display Scaling Changes Excel Column and Row Count

Question

Windows Display Scaling Changes Excel Column and Row Count

Anonymous

Hello.

After almost 4 years of using my old laptop, I have recently upgraded to a new laptop with a larger screen. On my previous device, the "Scale and layout" setting was set to 100% (as was recommended), while on the new device, it is set to 125% (as is recommended). Upon opening my Excel documents that I transferred to the new computer, I noticed that the row widths and column widths have changed due to the scaling change. This change has massively impacted the layouts of all of my previous Excel worksheets (which are very numerous in quantity) to the point where anything that was designed to accommodate specific printing settings and page layout settings have become a chaotic mess now that new rows and columns have been added to every page since the widths have been changed.

You can view this problem for yourself by opening up one of your own Excel sheets to view the layout, closing the sheet, changing the scaling, and reopening the same sheet to compare the differences (printing both documents will reveal the layout change if it is not immediately recognizable). The issue can be undone by reverting to the previous scaling setting, but this is not a long-term solution (or even a short-term one) on my device as doing so (back to 100% scaling) shrinks all screen elements across the entire operating system. Changing the display scaling should not change the physical layout of a document in any way as it currently does (again, try printing an identical document with different scaling applied).

Please help me find a solution to this problem as it would require literal days (if not weeks) of work to reformat every sheet and would continue to persist as an issue anyway even if I did reformat should I ever choose to upgrade to a different device with a different screen scaling value.

Thank you in advance!

EDIT(S):

2021-07-12: This issue also makes it incredibly challenging (if not impossible) to share these Excel sheets with anyone else who does not also have their display scaling set to the same value.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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5 answers

Answer 1

On another note, I was able to find another Microsoft Community post describing this same issue again with much more community interaction. It would seem that many more people are negatively impacted by this than I was originally expecting...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-printing-and-display-scaling-bug/8a3d45fb-4616-4364-8fcc-e1bf38f98998?page=7

Answer 2

Thank you for your response.

That doesn't seem to be the case on my device. I've triple checked the differences, and it does appear to change the document. To demonstrate, I've screenshotted a test sheet I made where the only differences is in the scaling change. I've removed the margins to make the effect noticeable on such a small sheet.

100% Scaling:

125% Scaling:

I was able to find another user who reported this issue, but their question unfortunately appears to have gone unresolved when they stopped responding: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-column-width-changes-depending-on-display/665f0790-89ee-4fac-933d-99e554053285 .

In addition to that, this problem has also previously existed (and apparently was resolved!) on a forum back in 2011 ( https://www.excelforum.com/excel-general/779106-same-excel-file-different-display-between-computers.html ), but I do not know how to apply this solution to my device as I am running Windows 10 instead.

Both of those forums seem to describe the issue in greater detail if you might be able to find them more beneficial in diagnosing this.

Answer 3

Yeah, it would seem like row/column size adjustments with screen scaling would be considered a bug rather than a feature on Microsoft's end, but either way, I would definitely appreciate any help you or anyone you know might be able to provide. At the moment, I've been sort of able to proceed by just working with the data in the sheets with messed up formatting, but I'm not exactly looking forward to reworking the layouts of all of my files as a long-term solution, haha. 😅

Please notify me of any ideas you might have to resolve this. I've already attempted to apply the given solution in the 2nd link of my previous post, but it would appear that it only applies to Windows 7 (and possibly Windows 8).

I very greatly appreciate even the time you've already given in an attempt to review this issue. Thank you.

Answer 4

That sure is unexpected, I'll review those.

I knew that opening the document on differing DPI displays would change the view, both from using two different monitors of differing DPI's and from sharing files with other coworkers who have different DPI scales on their machine, but I've never observed it change the printed results, just onscreen viewpoint.

Answer 5

@CmdrKeene 90,616 Volunteer Moderator

It's not changing the file, the file will continue to print identically no matter which machine you take it too. Only your zoom level changes.

No matter what your local scaling level is, you can see that pressing Ctrl+P will show you an identical "print preview" no matter what.

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Windows Display Scaling Changes Excel Column and Row Count

5 answers