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I've had my work machine for some time and I'm developing a small Access db for users within the company. The problem is that the forms seem to show at different magnifications (or something) for other users, resulting in the screen only showing part of the form.

It looks fine on my machine. However, when I tested it out with a coworker, who had the exact the same resolution settings and the same size monitor, the bottom 1/3 of the screen doesn't show. The text looked to be extra large. The Access form & db are both maximized and our monitors are the exact same model.

Any ideas? It's possible that in the last few years, I customized my machine in some small way and promptly forgot all about it. I should also add that I've seen the same thing happen around here before with other Access databases as well.

PowerUser
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1 Answers1

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I've run across this a few times myself. It seems to stem from the fact that there are two ways to control the size of text on the screen in Windows:

  1. Choose a "Small/Regular/Large Fonts" color scheme for Windows, which tweaks the font size for specific UI elements but leaves the display's DPI setting alone.

  2. Use the Windows Control Panel "Adjust font size (DPI)" setting: "default" = 96 DPI, "larger text" = 120 DPI. Unfortunately this approach seems to affect the dimensions of other things too, not just text.

Some development environments [attempt to] provide ways to adjust for different DPI settings but it can get complicated, as documented in the earlier question here. Wherever possible I just

  • try not to pack too much onto Single Forms,

  • leave some healthy margins around those forms for the nominal desktop size I've targeted, and then

  • hope for the best. :)

Community
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Gord Thompson
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  • I don't like it, but I agree with it. It's not feasible for me to test & adjust every end user's machine, so I'll just have to reformat my forms to make it all small enough. Thanks! – PowerUser Apr 03 '13 at 19:13