Microsoft Project 2013 - Timeline view is 'un-viewable'

[Peter Loew]

I have a 2014 15" Retina MBP (Yosemite), running Parallels 10.2 and Windows 8.1 Pro as a guest OS, which is primarily used to run Microsoft Project 2013 and Microsoft Visio 2013.

Problem: The timeline view in Microsoft Project 2013 is unreadable / un-viewable due to it looking like it is at an extremely high resolution, as a result everything on the timeline is too small to read and the shapes also seem disjointed and do not connect to each other properly. The rest of the MS Project app looks fine, as do other apps under the Windows OS. My OS X screen resolution is set to 'more space' (1680x1050), and I run the VM in full screen mode (3360x1884). No matter what I set the OS X resolution to, I get the same result in MS Project, likewise if I change the Windows resolution to a lower setting.

I did not have this problem when I had my non Retina MBA. Since my business case for using Parallels is primarily to run MS Project, I really need the timeline view to be workable.

Is there anything else I can try to get this working properly, is it a known bug? I have a colleague with a similar setup to mine, who's using Virtual Box instead, and he doesn't have this problem.

Thanks
Peter

 

[AlekseyM]

This is actually a MS project issue. Same issue if you use a surface pro 3. What I recommend is turn off high DPI just for MS Project. Right click your MS Project icon or program, click properties, click compatibility, and check "disable display scaling on high dpi settings"

Let me know if that works

 

[Peter Loew]

This is actually a MS project issue. Same issue if you use a surface pro 3. What I recommend is turn off high DPI just for MS Project. Right click your MS Project icon or program, click properties, click compatibility, and check "disable display scaling on high dpi settings"

Let me know if that works

Hi Aleskey, thanks for the promising reply. I tried this but unfortunately it didn't work - it is still exactly the same as if unchecked.
Peter

 

[AlekseyM]

Anyway you can attach a screenshot?

 

[Peter Loew]

Screenshots attached. Thanks

 

[AlekseyM]

In the interim you can just turn off DPI scaling for the VM in display hardware of VM configuration.
Try one more thing for me. In windows, right click desktop, screen resolution, make text bigger or smaller and set a % that is less than 200. So like 150%. It will ask to log out. Everything will look slightly smaller but see if the timeline looks better or the same.

 

[Peter Loew]

In the interim you can just turn off DPI scaling for the VM in display hardware of VM configuration.
Try one more thing for me. In windows, right click desktop, screen resolution, make text bigger or smaller and set a % that is less than 200. So like 150%. It will ask to log out. Everything will look slightly smaller but see if the timeline looks better or the same.

I tried making the text bigger / small. First to 150% then to 100%. Whilst everything looks smaller, the timeline although still very small, actually looks like it's getting drawn properly (see screenshot).

What options are you referring to not he VM; I only see an option for enabling / disabling Retina resolution, which doesn't make much difference.

 

[AlekseyM]

Enabling / disabling retina resolution should make a world of a difference. If you disable retina resolution and turn off dpi scaling in windows, everything should act as if you have a standard monitor. A little blurry though as the pixels are just doubled. Almost sounds like something else is going on.

I don't have a retina laptop anymore so I can't test, but I'll see if i can blow up the fonts anyway and see if the timeline moves up.

I also wonder if there is some setting in Microsoft Project for "zooming" the timeline.

 

[Peter Loew]

Enabling / disabling retina resolution should make a world of a difference. If you disable retina resolution and turn off dpi scaling in windows, everything should act as if you have a standard monitor. A little blurry though as the pixels are just doubled. Almost sounds like something else is going on.

I don't have a retina laptop anymore so I can't test, but I'll see if i can blow up the fonts anyway and see if the timeline moves up.

I also wonder if there is some setting in Microsoft Project for "zooming" the timeline.

I've disabled Retina resolution, set the scaling in Windows to 100% and changed the Windows resolution to 1680x1050 and it all looks much better now, albeit blurrier and not as pretty. Thanks for the help with this, at least I can now use the timeline mode again.

So far as I know, you cannot zoom the timeline in terms of size, only in terms of time, which is unrelated to the issue.

 

[AlekseyM]

I'm getting a retina MB later next week, I'll try it out and see if there is a better solution.

 

[Peter Loew]

Great, looking fwd to that!