Scaling bug - Exports are blank or cropped

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Written by Julien Villemonteix | Updated

UpSlide exports Excel content as images. If the export in Word or PowerPoint appears to be cropped, zoomed in, blank, or has a white border, it results from a Windows scaling bug.

Root cause

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 will likely yield strange results after pasting within PowerPoint or anywhere else. 

UpSlide exports are also 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
  • the pasted shape can appear blanked

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On Windows 8:

You encounter this bug for specific hardware configurations when you connect a second screen to your computer, make it the main display, and unplug it.
Unplugging makes the remaining display the main one, but Ms Office keeps referencing 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.

 

Solution

  • 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 into 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.

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