MS Access – High DPI issues

With the higher and higher screen resolutions we are starting to see issues with Office application and High DPI displays. For instance, if you look at the following Answers forum thread

Has anybody at Microsoft ever edited an Access Form Chart control on a zoomed high DPI display?

you can see a few screenshots of just how useable Access can become in a High DPI environment.  Now, I mention Access, but this can be an issue with pretty much any application (Excel, Word, Outlook, …) and the fix elaborated below is applicable to any of them as well.

The Fix

There is a little known fix to this issue, but as per the usual it isn’t well known and is left to the user to implement!

  1. Close any open instances of Access (or whatever program you are trying to fix)
  2. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the program exe (so for Access you need to locate the msaccess.exe file) which is typically found in
  3. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15     (replace the 15 with whatever version you are running)
  4. Then right-click on the file itself and select Properties.
  5. Click on the Compatibility tab
  6. Enable the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings property by clicking on the checkbox.
  7. Click OK, close Windows Explorer and start Access and all should be good.

Now, in the case of Access, since it incorporates other programs within it, you also need to apply the same change to them.  So be sure to repeat the above steps to GRAPH.EXE so any charts/graphs display properly for you!

We can only hope that Microsoft will make such manual tweaks automated in the near future so that an application automatically adjusts and display in an optimal manner depending on its environment.

Resources on the Subject

7 responses on “MS Access – High DPI issues”

  2. John O'H

    Brilliant, thanks Daniel. I don’t know why there hasn’t been a louder outcry about this, especially regarding ms graph.

  3. Gustavo Ruiz Bonino

    Excellent, I must add that in Windows 10 you dont have that property, instead you have to edit the msaccess.exe.manifest (its a plain text file), found this “true” change it to false and save the file. Viola! Now you can see ACCESS with no problem in 3840 x 2160 🙂

  4. Richard Butler

    I have been examining Microsoft’s “High DPI Desktop Application Development on Windows” dated
    05/30/2018 which states: “In order to update an existing desktop application to handle DPI scaling properly, it needs to be updated such that, at a minimum, the important parts of its UI are updated to respond to DPI changes.” I have issues with an application written in 2002 using code from the Access 2000 Developer’s Handbook, Getz Litwin and Gilbert to resize forms. Disabling scaling on the High DPI does not help. Specifically; when a user clicks on the maximize button on the top right, the program hangs and must be restarted. Perhaps something is needed in the Resize event. The Microsoft article suggests updating older applications but their example seems to be using code other than VBA. Is there any reference available to deploy an update written in VBA? Also is there a reference library that must be added to the database to deploy the update?

  5. Lawrence Salvucci

    Gustavo, that’s incorrect with regards to Windows 10. You go to the compatibility tab and then click the “Change high DPI settings” button at the bottom. Then put a check in the “Override high DPI scaling behavior” and then choose SYSTEM from the drop down menu box right below the checkbox. Then start MS Access and viola! It works like a charm in Access 2007.

  6. Mudhafar Ismael

    Awsome, thanks Daniel.
    Things are different for me. MSACESS.EXE doesn’t show a compatibility tab. However, the GRAPH.EXE does. Press the button “Change high DPI settings”, then tick the “Override high DPI scaling …”, DONE!
    If you also have the pictures shrunk, you will have to change the System>Display.