FAQ: Font size problems (Windows Scaling Problems).
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In general people would like the ability to change fonts wherever they see them, this is not possible, and there are many interactions between settings in Quicken and in their operating system that can cause users problems and not allow them to achieve the desired results. This FAQ addresses the reasons, the current status, and possible workarounds.
I will try first put in some history, and then try to address each common problem.
Definitions:
Windows DPI setting: Dots Per Inch (a dot is also referred to as a pixel).
Depending on the size and resolution of a screen every screen has a DPI.
Scaling:
Every object put on a screen was originally drawn using a given amount of pixels. If, on a given screen, that object is now too small you might "scale" it up, which is to say for every 1 pixel in the object use say 1.25, or 2 or some other number of pixels.
Note there is currently a bug in Quicken 2014 R7/2015 R8/Quicken 2016 R5 that if you have multiple screens and they are set to different resolutions, and you put Quicken on the screen other than the primary screen it will mess up in maximized mode. It will have a big blank spot with the window data pushed to one side, as shown below. This is due to Quicken looking at the primary monitor to decide what size it should be in maximize mode.
A workaround is to make the screen that you are trying to display Quicken on, the primary/main display. Right click Desktop -> Screen Resolution, click display where you are going to display Quicken, and select Make this my main display -> OK. (Or of course you could run in non maximized mode).
I will try first put in some history, and then try to address each common problem.
Definitions:
Windows DPI setting: Dots Per Inch (a dot is also referred to as a pixel).
Depending on the size and resolution of a screen every screen has a DPI.
Scaling:
Every object put on a screen was originally drawn using a given amount of pixels. If, on a given screen, that object is now too small you might "scale" it up, which is to say for every 1 pixel in the object use say 1.25, or 2 or some other number of pixels.
UPDATE! Quicken 2015/2016 now support Windows scaling (except in a few sections like the new Portfolio X-Ray, which doesn't scale. Note the X-Ray feature is only in the Premier and higher versions). Also another person has mentioned that the annual budget view isn't being scaled right, and the columns are too narrow cutting off some numbers. I just noticed that the system menu (File, Edit, ...) doesn't properly scale when selecting View -> Use Large Fonts (true of Quicken 2014 too). But it will respond to Windows scaling. This is based on me setting my screens to different settings, and from the feedback of another person that was using a Surface 3 Pro. Note on tablets you might have to use a mouse instead of the touch screen. Also on a Lenovo Yogo it has been mentioned that the Tax Planner is messed up.
MAJOR UPDATE!!! A Quicken user has found workaround for the problems people are having with high resolution screens.
Please see in the answer below.
Note there is currently a bug in Quicken 2014 R7/2015 R8/Quicken 2016 R5 that if you have multiple screens and they are set to different resolutions, and you put Quicken on the screen other than the primary screen it will mess up in maximized mode. It will have a big blank spot with the window data pushed to one side, as shown below. This is due to Quicken looking at the primary monitor to decide what size it should be in maximize mode.
A workaround is to make the screen that you are trying to display Quicken on, the primary/main display. Right click Desktop -> Screen Resolution, click display where you are going to display Quicken, and select Make this my main display -> OK. (Or of course you could run in non maximized mode).
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History- Quicken Windows discussion, For Quicken Essentials for Mac you only can change size of fonts by changing the screen resolution.
- If you are using Quicken Windows with a retina screen in Parallels or any other Virtual Machine on a Mac see the "Mac" answer below for a possible solution for you.
- If you are using a high resolution screen and a large screen the last answer might help you.
The result is for better or worse Quicken is a patch work of these things and as such some things that seem easy to the customer, like having control over all the fonts in the program and having them consistent is actually very difficult. A special case should also be pointed out and that is the regular register and what Quicken calls the Investment transaction list (investment register). These two have had a long history of being developed pretty much as separate things. They may look similar, but at the core they are very different as can be seen in the way you can (or can’t) change fonts and columns and such.
People using the Windows DPI scaling to make everything larger tend to say something to the effect that why does such a simple thing like making everything larger mess up things in Quicken. The truth is that over the different versions of Windows Microsoft has actually done different things for this, and they have never in the core provided the programmer a simple solution. There is a lot of work to make this look right, and when you add in the fact that Quicken is a mix of GUI styles it has been next to impossible for Intuit make this work/look right in Quicken.
There have been several attempts that never made it out of Beta to get Quicken to work right with a DPI scaling of something other than 100%/smaller/normal (different operating systems have different names for this).
See this link for information about this problem, and see that Quicken is not the only program that this has been a problem for: http://www.kynosarges.org/WindowsDpi.html
The latest attempt by Intuit to fix this problem came out in Quicken 2012, and is also in Quicken 2013, and it is called “Use Large Fonts”. The idea here is for Quicken to do the scaling, as in make everything 125% larger. It was done this way for two reasons. The problems described above, and for the complaint “All my other applications are fine, but the print on Quicken is too small”. So by definition for the last complaint they wanted Quicken to do the 125% scaling even when other programs weren’t. Well it turns out that this “internal” scaling had even greater effects on how bad the Windows DPI scaling would “disturb” Quicken’s “look”.
Also it should be noted that there is a secondary problem of people wanting more and more on their screens and having higher resolution screens to support it, and then the people for one reason or another want to run at a lower resolution, and how does the GUI designer construct the GUI in a way that it works for these different groups. No solution is going to be perfect for 100% of the setups out there.
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Answer for Question: “Everything Quicken is too small how to I make everything larger?”
View -> Use Large Fonts
This solution comes with a caveat , Quicken has a requirement of a display resolution of 1024x768 or greater. If you are using a resolution less than this all of the dialogs might not fit on the screen.
Well Use Large Fonts scales everything by 125% so that means that to get the minimum resolution you have to use so everything fits you have to multiply the numbers above by 1.25 so you come up with the resolution of 1280x960.
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Answer to Question: “I want to change the font in only the regular account registers, how do I do it?”
Edit -> Preferences -> Register -> Fonts...
Notes:
You cannot put in a font size smaller then 8.
If you are running in a Windows DPI scale of 125% and want to match the font style and size that the investment registers use, I have found Utssah with a point size of 8 is best match. I found Utssah on Windows 8, I’m not sure it is available on every operating system, especially not Windows XP.
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Answer to Question: “I want to change the font for printing a report, how do I do it?”
To set the default: File -> Printer Setup, there is a setting for reports and graphs, and another one for checks.
Note as you are printing a report you can also adjust the fonts at that time, in the print dialog.
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Answer to the Question: “Everything is too large (including text and buttons, ...), how do I fix it?”
1. Check that: View -> Use Large Fonts... is not on.
2. Make sure your Windows screen resolution is not too low. You need a resolution of at least 1024x768. But if you have the Windows DPI set to greater then 100% you will need an even greater resolution (the same goes for the "Use Large Fonts" option). With a DPI setting of 125% you will need to increase the resolution to 1.25 times the 1024x768 requirement. If you are using 150%, then the resolution will have to be 1.5 times the 1024x768 requirement.
3. If the problem is only in the regular account registers and not in say the investment register, see problem for Regular account register font is too large.
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Answer to Question: “The font size of just the regular account registers is too large, how do I fix it?”
This is happening because you are using a DPI setting that is greater than 100%. If you go change back to 100% the problem will go away. For these settings see these links.
How to adjust, Windows 7/8:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/443-dpi-display-size-settings-change.html
How to adjust Windows XP:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips/dpi-settings-on-windows-xp/
OK there are going to be people that don’t want to change the Windows DPI setting.
Well the only thing you can do is try to pick a font for the regular account register that you can live with.
Fonts vary from operating system to operating system so you might have to use a different font.
See the answer on how to change the regular register fonts.
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I'm using Quicken Windows on a Mac, with a retina screen, in Parallels or some other Virtual Machine and having the same kind of font problems, and changing the DPI setting still doesn't fix all the problems, what can be done? (Also see the answer for people working with high resolution screens)
Shut down the Parallels, and change its configuration (hardware, video) to "scaled" rather than "best for retina". Obviously, this applies only to Retina computers.
If you are using some other virtual machine other than Parallels, look for a similar setting to have the virtual machine scale your virtual machine desktop window.0 -
I'm trying to use Quicken on a high resolution screen, and parts of Quicken are not scaled properly?
This workaround involves telling Windows to do the scaling instead of leaving it up to Quicken. This might result in some pixelization on some icons, but has been reported to work quite well for Quicken.
The first step is to download the FixQuickenHiRes.reg and qw.exe.manifest.
You can edit both of these files (in NotePad) to see what is in them.
Then in File Explorer double click on FixQuickenHiRes.reg. Windows will ask/warn you about the dangers of running this file. This file adds this key (and sets it to 1): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSideBySidePreferExternalManifest
This tells it to use the qw.exe.manifest (any program's external manifest).
The next step is to use File Explorer to copy qw.exe.manifest to this folder: C:Program Files (x86)Quicken
Note if you are on a 32-bit version of Windows it is: C:Program FilesQuicken
If you need to remove this workaround you would delete qw.exe.manifest from the above Program Files folder.
If you want to remove the PreferExternalManifest key from the registry you can download the RemoveFixQuickenHiRes.reg file, and double click on it. But please note that if you have used this workaround for another program you don't want to remove this registry setting.
Special thanks for user Chris who found the fix, and for Dan Antonielli, which is original source of this workaround for the same kind of problems in Adobe products. Please see this question for more details:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7884903/whats-the-latest-on-quicken-and-ultra-high-resolution-monitors
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