Excel Looks Strange on Second Monitor

Excel Looks Strange on Second Monitor

Lately, I’ve noticed that some things in Excel look strange, when I have them on my second monitor. For example, an Excel UserForm listbox doesn’t show its scroll bar. But, if I drag that UserForm to my other monitor, the scroll bar magically reappears. Finally, I tried a quick fix, and it seems to be working!

Change an Excel Option

Here’s the quick fix that’s working for me, and I hope it solves Excel display issues for you too.

  • In Excel options, General category, User Interface Options,  choose Optimize for compatibility (application restart required)
  • Things should look okay after you restart Excel.

The problem details and solution steps are below.

Note: This option setting was introduced in Microsoft Office 2016.

UserForm Looks Strange

Here’s a screen shot of the UserForm listbox, opened on my second monitor. All 12 months are in the list, but only the first 5 month names are visible.

There are a couple of things that look strange in this UserForm:

  • There should be a scroll bar at the right side of the listbox, but it isn’t showing.
  • The listbox should be the full width of the UserForm, but it’s about an inch narrower

Move to Other Monitor

With the UserForm open, if I drag it to my primary monitor, everything looks fine.

  • The scroll bar appears at the right
  • The listbox is almost as wide as the UserForm

So that’s what I had been doing, when things looked strange in Excel, on the second monitor.  But I’ve found a better solution now!

Monitor Display Settings

My second monitor is set at the recommended resolution – 1920 x 1080. That’s a bit small for me to read, so I’ve got the size of text, apps and other items set at 125% zoom.

I think it’s the display zooming that Excel has trouble with.

On my laptop (the primary monitor), I chose a display resolution of 1280×720, instead of the recommended setting of 1920 x 1080.

With that resolution, I don’t have the option of changing the the size of text, apps and other items – the box is greyed out. Excel seems okay, when the zoom is at the default  setting of 100%.

Fix the Problem

I don’t want to go to 100% zoom on the secondary monitor, just so Excel will show UserForms correctly. But fortunately, there’s an Excel option setting that made the secondary display work correctly!

This tip comes from Excel MVP, Wyn Hopkins, at Access Analytic in Perth, Western Australia. He suggested this as a fix for Power Query Editor display problems. I wondered if it would fix the UserForm problem too, and it did!

To change the setting:

  • At the top of Excel, click the File tab
  • At the bottom of the list on the left, click Options
  • In the list at the left, click the General category
  • In the  User Interface Options section, under When using multiple displays, choose Optimize for compatibility (application restart required)
  • Click OK, to close the Options window
  • Close Excel and restart it

Did It Work for You?

Did that option setting fix the Excel display problems for you?

Or did you find another solution to the problems?

__________________

Excel Looks Strange on Second Monitor

__________________

22 thoughts on “Excel Looks Strange on Second Monitor”

  1. Thanks for the article Debra! I also could not get my Power Query window to display on my second monitor. I gave your fix a try and yes it worked! What a simple fix.
    Thank you so much! 🙂

    1. Thanks Debra,

      For me the “Optimize for Best Appearance” setting solved my issues. The gridlines in my spreadsheet were appearing and disappearing randomly as I move the slider bar up and down with no rhyme or reason. It’s been a problem without a solution for two or three weeks now and I just ran across your article when randomly curious about it again. Thank you!

  2. Thanks for the tip Debra. I also noticed that the Conditional Rules Formatting Manager dialogue box was missing the ‘Applies To’ column which makes it very difficult to make modifications if you want to change the range that a given conditional format applies to. I thought it was just me. :o)

  3. I think you may have saved my sanity. My Excel has been behaving badly for quite awhile now. So far, this simple fix is working wonders. Thank you!

  4. It would really be of great assistance if YOU WOULD STATE WHAT VERSION OF EXCEL YOUR ARTICLE DEALS WITH. IF ti only applies to the 365 version know would REALLY help us readers

  5. The symptoms described very similar to my pernicious issue. I’m running with an intel UHD620 on a lenovo laptop (single integrated GPU).

    In my case, when I scroll the conditional formatting dialog, it always renders the initially visible cell references, but then only renders cell references that scroll into view correctly on my laptop’s monitor (set to primary). On the external monitor (either Displayport or HDMI) It blanks out the cell references (everything else in the dialogs displays and works) as they scroll in/out of view. If it was shown initially, it disappears after scrolling out of view.

    Changing the compatibility settings for me made no difference. After a significant amount of trial/error, I was able to eliminate DPI and scaling as the cause. Mirroring displays rather than extending didn’t produce the issue on the external monitor.

    What “solved” the issue (really a workaround, since a 3rd display is probably still affected) was to set my external monitor as the primary display in windows. Doing so and keeping all other settings prevented the problem from happening on either monitor (so it didn’t migrate).

    I can’t answer the why. Excel must have an issue with rendering correctly on secondary monitors that are external.

  6. Thank you for this posting! I query a lot and this issue was happening to my query window and I couldn’t query at all. I have Excel 2019 and it worked perfectly for me.

  7. Try setting up the second monitor to 60Hz. I had a similar problem when moving excel maximized on a second screen, the screen go’s black. By changing the frequency of the screen it solved my problem.

  8. I had a different problem with the Excel View, but changing the User Interface option did the trick – thank you 🙂

  9. Thanks a lot. This is very helpful as I’d had problem with some gridlines disappearing on second monitor and this help me fixed it.

  10. Thanks so much for this tip. My external monitor was failing to display some of the contents of cells depending on Zoom setting, with some data omitted at 70% but visible at 60% and 100%. Really weird. Your suggestion to select Optimize for Compatibility worked like a charm – everything is now displayed at every Zoom setting!

  11. I had a problem seeing all the Excel grid lines and formatting lines on my external monitor. Even bought another monitor! Changed the settings to ‘Optimise for best Appearance’ and cured this longstanding annoyance.

    Many thanks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.