Link: exports cropped / with white borders (Scaling bug)

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Written by Julien | Updated

UpSlide exports Excel content as images. If the export in Word or PowerPoint appears to be cropped, zoomed in or has a white border. It is the result of a Windows scaling bug.

Note that as of UpSlide V5.2, the Export feature is fixed. In some specific configurations, we fall back to using images in the BMP format, so you may notice a loss of quality. If you want to avoid it, log off, then log in again. Also, note that the native Excel "Copy as Image" feature is broken regardless of the version of UpSlide.

 

Root cause

Since Windows 8, when a change in the primary monitor's scaling occurs, some Windows features stop behaving properly until log off/log in. Microsoft calls the issue "the Windows scaling issue for high-DPI devices". It occurs when these three conditions are met:

  • Use of two or more screens,
  • one of these screens has a very high resolution and a different scaling from the others,
  • the configuration changes during the same login session, such as docking/undocking a device or unplugging an external monitor without restarting the computer.


One feature impacted by this is Excel's "Copy as Image" native feature. It is likely to yield strange results after pasting within PowerPoint or anywhere else. UpSlide exports will be impacted since it leverages this feature for the Link functionality. 

The pasted shape can appear cropped on the bottom-right corner or with a large white border on the same corner, as shown below:

 

On Windows 8:

You encounter this bug for specific hardware configurations when you connect a second screen to your computer, make it the principal display, and unplug it.
Unplugging makes the remaining display the main one, but Ms Office keeps a reference of the old one to compute the enhanced metafile used to export.

On Windows 10:

Simply changing the scaling of the primary monitor will cause the issue.

 

Workaround

You can sign out of your Windows session and sign back in to update the scaling. It will temporarily solve the issue, but you risk seeing it occur again.

A more permanent solution is to go in the Windows Display Settings and select your laptop screen as the primary monitor. You can restart your computer to ensure the monitor configuration is correct at startup.