Documents displayed on my HP monitor look blurry when using the desktop version Microsoft Word

[rmcnulty]

Dear support community, 

I am having display problems with my HP VH20A 23.8-inch monitor. To visualize the problem, I have attached the picture below. 

My HP VH20A monitor has a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080.

It is attached to a Dell laptop with a  3840 x 2160 display.

If I look at a desktop version of a Microsoft Word document on the laptop display, the text is sharp and clear.

If I look at the same document using the online 365 version of a Word document on the HP VH240a monitor, it also looks fine.

However, if I open the same document using the desktop version of Word on the HP VH240a monitor, the text looks blurry. To illustrate this, I have attached a photo with three screenshots of the same thing. The laptop display is the sharpest because it has a much higher resolution. The middle screenshot of Word 365 is what I would expect given the lower resolution. But the desktop version of Word on the HP VH240a monitor is terrible. I've looked for solutions online, but I can't find anything to fix this. I have opened the Device Manager in Windows and it says that all drivers are up to date. Very strange. Does anyone have a solution for this?

Thanks for any insights.

[erico]

That is a resolution issue.

You must ensure that the output resolution of your laptop matches the input resolution of your display. 

If your laptop will not output 1920 x 1080 to your display there will always be an issue.

I suggest that you modify the output of the laptop to make it work or get a display that accepts higher resolution.

[rmcnulty]

Based on what you are saying, everything on my HP monitor should be blurry, but it is only the desktop version of Microsoft Word that is blurry when it is displayed on my HP monitor. 

[erico]

What do you mean by "the desktop version of Microsoft Word"?

This issue is likely has more to do with resolution settings and your laptop.

If you connect the display to the laptop with HDMI instead of VGA you might not see the issue.

If you connect your laptop through whatever means you are using to a higher resolution display with HDMI, the issue probably won't be present.

The issue as you describe it would seem to be more of a minor annoyance than an actual problem.

[rmcnulty]

My laptop is connected to the HP display with an HDMI cable. There are two versions of Microsoft Word. For the desktop version, one downloads the program and runs the program on one's machine with documents stored on one's hard drive. For the online 365 version of Word, one works on documents in the cloud using one's browser. My laptop display has a higher resolution than my HP display. Thank you for your time, however, I think your characterization of this as "more of a minor annoyance than an actual problem," is wrong. If you look at the screenshot, it shows clearly the extent of the problem. My HP display works fine in almost all cases. However, it isn't displaying properly when viewing documents with the desktop version of Word, which is the program that I use most often. I presumed that there must be a solution and I posted it here because I thought someone in this community might have seen it before and could tell me what setting to adjust to fix it. 

[erico]

" My laptop display has a higher resolution than my HP display."

That is the crux of the problem.

A higher resolution display is what is needed to achieve  a clear image.