DPI setting on OSX

Question

When I open my Excel spreadsheets or Word docs on my MacBook Pro 15" (in MS Office 2008), I always need to zoom in to 125-150%.

Since the zoom settings are saved with the document, I'd rather not have to change the zoom level back and forth when opening the same docs on my Windows computer and my Mac.

I'd expect there to be a setting for this somewhere, but I can't seem to find it.

How can I set the system DPI on Mac OSX 10.5.7? Or how can I set the DPI for MS Office on the Mac?

Solution 1

And remember that the two systems display fonts quite differently. For best cross-platform results, stick with 11-point helvetica. Won't alter the need for a change in zoom, necessarily, but will ensure that your careful pagination in one isn't totally destroyed in another.

Solution 2

Assuming you're using the 15.4" screen at its native 1440x900 resolution, then that works out to 110dpi:

Even if Word were mistakenly using 96ppi instead of 110ppi, you'd get a magnification of only 115%.

What it's probably doing is using the traditional (as in, mid-90's Mac OS pre-X) 72ppi, which would give a magnification of about 150%. So its completely ignoring the system setting, sorry.

Comments

[Admin]

Not qualified to answer, hence just the comment, but my suspicion here is that MS Office is not respecting system DPI accurately and rendering fonts much smaller than they should be. I am a Linux user with a properly set DPI, so it's very noticable for me when I see Windows apps.

[Edward Brey]

This would still cause the problem that the OP mentioned of having the zoom setting saved with the document and then applied undesirably when the document is opened on Windows.

[Edward Brey]

As you surmised, using Helvetica doesn't solve the DPI mismatch problem.