LabVIEW Distorting Front and Back Panel Objects After File Renaming

[rpbrn]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a large LabVIEW project and recently needed to rename several files used in it. As expected, LabVIEW made the process more complicated than necessary, and I spent several hours resolving the resulting broken references and conflicts.

However, I’ve also encountered an unexpected issue:

After the renaming, LabVIEW has distorted the sizes and positions of objects on both the front and back panels of all VIs in the project.

This has caused text to overlap, labels to be cut off, and controls/indicators to be misaligned.

I’ve attached a PDF with three examples illustrating the problem.

Has anyone experienced this before, and is there a quick way to fix it without manually adjusting each VI?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Best regards,

Raphaël

[BertMcMahan]

A couple tips for you- first, if you rename something, do it from WITHIN LabVIEW. You can rename individual files in the Save As menu and it (usually) won't break a bunch of links, as long as everything's in the same Project file. You can also move things using that same dialog- select "Rename" then just pick a new path. You can also do this with drag-and-drop from the Files tab of the Project, or you can right click and say "Move on disk". Renaming things OUTSIDE of LabVIEW basically always breaks stuff and requires manual fixing.

Regarding your issues- it looks like either your fonts changed or you zoomed in. Are you using the (relatively new) Zoom feature in LabVIEW? It can make some fonts squirrely and is but one reason I have it turned off.

Regarding your "stuff overlapping" issue, I don't know why renaming files would do that. Were there any other changes? New PC, switching Windows versions, reinstalling LabVIEW, etc?

Fonts can change sometimes depending on your system settings. See this link (and the "Related" at the bottom): https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019RQISA2&l=en-US

That might give you some ideas. Otherwise, check Tools -> Options -> Environment and see what Fonts is set to. Mine is set to "Application Font" and has "Use default" checked. This sets the font for your application environment.

[altenbach]

It is not obvious what you did, but renaming files outside of LabVIEW is typically not a good idea. If you rename them within the project, conflicts will be rare. Maybe you can go to your backups and start over.

Can you confirm that the changes in visuals shown occur on the exact same computer? Typically these issues happen if a different font is defined or if the font scaling in windows is different. 

[rpbrn]

Hello Bert,

Thank you for your answer. 

What I wrote in my first message wasn't exactly true, I didn't rename files, I renamed folders. And I don't think I can do that within LabVIEW (2020.0.1f1 32bits).

About my main issue, no, I'm not using the zoom feature as my version of LabVIEW is too old to have it. 

My default font is set to "Application Font" and the "Use Default" option is also checked.  

One thing I noticed though is that Windows got updated 2 days ago, right when this problem appeared. 

[rpbrn]

Hello,

Sorry, there was a mistake in my original message. I didn't rename files, I renamed folders. And I don't know how to do that within LabVIEW.

Yes the visual changes occured on the exact same computer. The only difference is that windows was updated the day the problem appeared. 

[rpbrn]

Okay I've found the problem :

Windows update.

I backed up to the previous update and everything is correctly sized again. But my diagram got messed up again. So it looks like I won't be escaping from fixing everything myself...

My question now is how do I prevent this from happening ? Should I just stop updating windows ?

[rpbrn]

Hello everyone,

I recently encountered an issue with LabVIEW (version 2020.0.1f1 32-bit) after a Windows 11 update. On April 1, 2026, my system automatically updated to Windows 11 version 25H2. Following this update, I noticed several visual disruptions in my LabVIEW project:

• Objects on the front panel were resized and misaligned.
• Objects on the block diagram were moved from their original positions.
• Wiring routes were altered.
• Text and objects now overlap.
• Editing block diagrams of large VIs is now impossible because of how slow LabVIEW became

Functionally, my VIs still work as expected when executed, but the visual layout is now chaotic.

I had similar issues in the past and I now fear that they were all due to windows updates.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues after a windows update? Are there known fixes or workarounds? Should I pause Windows updates ? 

For now I've uninstalled the update to keep working.

So any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Raphaël

[rolfk]

Stopping updating Windows is not likely an option. If your computer is connected to the Internet in any way, it is probably almost impossible to do except maybe postponing it for some time if you use an Enterprise or Professional version. And even if you could, in the current network safety situation it's similar to leaving your front door wide open so every burglar can simply walk in.

The reason is most likely that some of the system display settings and/or default fonts changed. LabVIEW's numeric control elements resize their height to the size of the font that the text has inside. If your update changes the default font or replaces some fonts with others for some reason (for instance licensing for a particular font or maybe just a Microsoft designer deciding that a particular font doesn't suit their fancy of the day and needs to be replaced with something else, that can cause LabVIEW to try to find a different font to match and that is a tricky thing to do since fonts tend to behave differently even if they look optically similar.

Basically, you can try to find out your screen settings that you used before such as the Scale and Resolution that Windows assumes for the screen(s) and setting control elements to use a specific font that you can make sure to keep installed on your systems. The default font in LabVIEW is a generic font whose mapping to an effective font is determined at startup of LabVIEW based on certain metrics if not specifically assigned in your preferences.

Windows updates can and regularly have in the past messed with all these things for me.