Problems with fonts (2003)

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I produce DBs (on my PC using Windows XP and Access 2003) for a charity which also uses windows XP and Access 2003.
After ensuring that all my labels are wide enough and display properly on the form, I delivered the DB and a lot of them – not all of them – displayed the effect shown in the attached word doc (I know the labels in the word doc are different widths – I’ve had to do that to mimic what happened on the customer PC)
I used Tahoma, font size 8 and the customer has Tahoma installed.
At first glance, it seems that the font size has changed on teh user PC so the text won’t fit in the label width. But why?
Can anyone suggest why this happens, please?
Thanks
Silverback

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Access formats a report for the default printer. If the PCs have different printers / printer drivers, the report may come out different. You might decrease the font size a bit so that the text fits regardless of the printer.

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Thanks for this – I didn’t appreciate the bit about formatting for the default printer.
However, this problem relates to the appearance of text on forms. It’s as if the implementation of Tahoma font size 8 on the target machine is different from the implementation Tahoma font size 8 on my machine. Is it possible that Tahoma is not actually installed on the target machine – and that although Access says that this is the font and size for some text, actually it’s substituted a different font? I just can’t see why text which fits in a label control on my machine should not fit on the target machine.
Thanks
Silverback

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Yes it is possible. To check whether Tahoma is installed switch to design view for any form, and use the toolbar to set the font for some control.
If Tahoma is in the list of options provided, it is installed.

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YOu might check the “dpi” size. I have two computers, and the same screen resolution, both pointing to the same printer, and yet the fonts display differently on both. I just clicked the “Advanced” tab on my screen propertings “settings” tab, and I don’t know what the heck “DPI” settings are, but on one computer they are “normal,” and on the other they are “large.” MAYBE MORE TO THE POINT — check out the “Appearance” tab in Display properties — on one of my computers, I have checked “large size” for the fonts, on the other, it is normal —

If you have users that play around with their screens the way I do, with a “by guess and by golly,” that might be part of the issue! I woudn’t want to change their settings, though, they might be very happy with the way they were set.

As far a printing, though — I have one user where a label caption displays well, but gets chopped off when printing — which I attribute to the printer, in that case. (The solution is simple in that case, though (stretch out the label). It’s wise to be generous with text widths, if you can be, for various reasons.

Pat

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Many thanks to all contributors to this posting.
I think Pat’s suggestion definitely seems very worthy of investigation. Now she mentions it, a friend said that his monitor had ‘gone mad’ and was displaying things all messed up. This was traced to DPI and/or Appearance (long time ago – can’t remember which exactly) so I’ll certainly have a look at teh user’s PC.
Will report back with findings.
As for your last point, I have, this morning, changed all the fonts to Arial (which I know is installed on their PC) and elongated all label widths!
Thanks for the help, everyone.
Silverback

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Deep joy and cheers to you, Pat! You’ve cracked the problem which has been bugging me for a long time. It’s caused by a combination of screen resolution, Appearance and DPI.
The user has her screen resolution set to 1024 x 768 pixels; mine is 1280 x 1024 pixels. Both of us have Appearance set to Font Size Normal but her DPI is set to Normal Size (96DPI) and mine is set to Large Size (120DPI)
My thoughts on this are that she is using a low resolution which makes things ‘larger’ on her monitor (albeit very ‘fuzzy’ IMHO); she therefore has DPI set to normal as icons, fonts etc are large enough.
I prefer to have max resolution that my monitor will stand so I get pin sharp icons, fonts etc but it makes them a bit small for my old eyes to see. So I upped the DPI setting to Large Size which makes things a little larger again (but still pin sharp). Setting my PC settings to hers reproduces the problems exactly.
I need to resolve this problem because I develop DBs for a number of charities.
I can see one way of sorting this is if I develop the DB on my machine using my settings (because that’s what suits my eyes best), find out what settings they have on the target machine and, just before handover, change the settings on my PC and amend any control(s) text that has been truncated, but that’s pretty nauseous to do, especially if it affects alignment of controls.
In any case, that still leaves the problem of what do I have to do cater for multiple users in the target organisation whose PC settings differ from each other?
Is there an easier (one for all) solution to this, please?
Thanks
Silverback

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The easiest solution is probably to experiment a bit with the DPI settings (I don’t think the screen resolution is important) and to work out the amount you have to oversize the labels to make the captions fit in all situations. Once you know that, you can stay with your preferred setting and take the oversize factor into account when designing a form.

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Glad you got it to work, Silverback! I think there are some Windows functions where you can determine what settings the user has, environment-wise, but making it work to modify your product, I just think that would be a massive undertaking . I think that the simplest and easiest suggestion (Han’s and mine) is just to expand the text fields as well as you are able, as well as sticking with the most standard fonts. I still operate in “by guess and by golly” mode as far as resolution, fonts, etc. goes. That works for me because I have a fairly limited (internal) environment to distribute my product to.

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