Applies To: SharePoint 2010

I was recently helping a user with their SharePoint site on their machine and I noticed some weirdness with the ribbon display. The Tab names were all truncated and too small and their User Name (Menu) was not showing in the upper right corner. Obviously, this concerned me.

Some quick searching didn’t turn up anything and I couldn’t reproduce it on my end. Then 2 days later I was helping someone else and they had the same display problems. Checked their version of IE and they were exactly the same (8.0.6001.18702CO)! But I believe the problem can happen with any version of IE 8.

With this new information did another quick search and found this quick article from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2062185 where they indicate the Zoom feature is causing the problem.

Sure enough, adjusting the zoom back to 100% fixed the display issue. Strangely, IE 8 seemed to be handling zoom levels in increments of 10 just fine (110%, 120%, etc.) but custom zoom levels (like 128%) freaked it out.

This is problematic because it looks like a problem with the site and adjusting your zoom level is as easy as holding the CTRL key while using the middle mouse scroll. I found that I couldn’t reproduce the problem with IE 9. Until we can get everyone upgraded (a major process around here), it’s just a matter of education among our support staff and end users.