Problem with Office programs scaling wierdly

Question

I am running Windows 10. Here is a screenshot of Word and PowerPoint side-by-side.

For some strange reason, which I can't work out how to solve, PowerPoint menus, icons, ribbon, etc are all scaling up enormously, which is making PowerPoint almost unusable. Here is the Screenshot.

And yet Word, Excel, etc are behaving nicely.

How can I fix this???

Answer 1

PowerPoint in particular seems to have scaling issues.  However, typically it happens on dual monitor setups.

Here are some tips, maybe one of them will work for you:

Another fix disable Scaling on High DPI settings

PPT 2013 Poor Scaling (Fuzzy/Blurry) on High-Res Display

Normally, this would be very simple. You just:

·     Right-click on your PowerPoint shortcut, and select Properties

·     Go to the Compatibility Tab

·     Check the “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” checkbox

·     Click OK / Apply

·     Relaunch PPT

Presto ackgr, problem solved. However, PPT15 is a 64-bit application, which means that these checkboxes are grayed out and cannot be changed from this UI.

The only solution I found was to edit the registry manually (caution: this is generally a very dangerous thing to do, so be very careful with this)

·     Type Windows Key + R to open the run dialog

·     type “regedit” and click OK

·     Expand the tree to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > AppCompatFlags > Layers

·     Click on the “Layers” node in the tree

·     Right-click in the right hand side of the window (where it says Name / Type / Data) and select New > String Value

·     In the name of the key item that is created, enter the location of your POWERPNT.EXE file (mine was “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\POWERPNT.EXE”) and hit Enter

·     Now, right click the key that was created and select Modify

·     In the Value Data text box, enter “HIGHDPIAWARE” and click OK

·     Close the registry editor, and try reopening PPT

If your problem was scaling on high DPI displays, the problem should be solved.

To confirm that you edited the registry correctly, follow the first set of directions above to view the compatibility settings of PowerPoint in the UI. The checkbox will still be grayed out, but it will now be checked.

Office on External monitor not scaling properly – Win 10

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-word/office-365-external-monitor-scaling-after-windows/a2b0281a-e8c8-4134-8bb0-9fdf2f22f666

Whenever I open an Office file (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) directly from within a directory, the auto-scaling doesn't work. Everything is huge when I drag it onto my 1080p monitor. However, when I open the program first, and then browse for and open the file from within the program, the auto-scaling works fine. I've uninstalled and reinstalled office, and that didn't fix it.

Fix: Turn off Preview Pane in Windows Explorer> View tab > Panes group > select one of the other layouts, other than “Preview pane”!

rescale- powerpoint will not scale properly on second Monitor – Scaling

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-powerpoint/powerpoint-will-not-scale-properly-on-second/90235c12-ee4b-44ec-aafb-856b4edd6948

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-powerpoint/why-do-some-programs-not-rescale-when-moving/2d6b217d-f81c-4115-9157-c9757bb81ef8?page=4&msgId=b3450b98-b28e-45e3-9ec9-fe39c80de563 

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>

5. 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.)

*********

I am on a Yoga 3 Pro with Office 2016 (beta) now, did a search for powerpnt.exe.manifest and found it here:

C:\ProgramFiles (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16

PPT Scaling Across Multiple Monitors

<snip>

I followed these instructions and was starting to despair when neither disabling the DPI scaling nor changing the pointer to mouse made a difference.

I was having the same issue in Power Point with the giant ribbon extending my desktop across a pair of Samsung S27E450 monitors.

To resolve I called my help desk and they walked me through these steps which worked and now power point looks normal on my external monitors.

1.   Go into display settings

2.   Choose one of the monitors that you was extending to - which is the main monitor for me

3.   Scroll to bottom and choose Advanced display settings

4.   In Multiple Displays - choose Extend desktop to this display

5.   Choose the right resolution for the monitor - listed as (recommended) by Windows

6.   Hit apply

7.   Save the changes

8.   Go back to advanced settings for that monitor - Look for a request to log out next to the Multiple Displays

9.   Log out

10. Log In
11. Start Power Point  

Hope this helps!

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Answer 2

Changing the settings within the powerpnt.exe.manifest file actuially worked!!! Thanks for the tip!!!

Answer 3

Perhaps PP is set in Touch mode?