I have recently realized that when I open multiple documents in Excel they all show up separately on Taskbar but show up in the same window of Excel. This can be very aggravating for anyone who works with multiple documents and multiple monitors. After becoming fed up with Excel I did some research online and found a solution.
My Computer
Tools
Folder Options
File Types
Choose XLSX (XLSX for 2007 or XLS for 2003)
Go to Advanced
Uncheck “browse in same window” in advanced window.
Then highlight Open
Edit
Make sure in the Action box it says &Open
Copy one of the following and paste into “application used to perform action” (Check whether current path has OFFICE11 or OFFICE12 then copy and paste one of the following:
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE” “%1″
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\EXCEL.EXE” “%1″
Check the box next to use DDE
Remove anything that is in DDE Message box and DDE Application Not Running box.
Make sure the application box says: EXCEL
And in the Topic box it says: System
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=234896&messageID=2510797
Thanks Jon.
Jonathan Oppelaar
5 comments
Brett says:
January 19, 2009 at 8:19 pm (UTC -4)
This solution would not work for me on Windows Vista. I put together another solution for Windows Vista at the following location:
http://brett.batie.com/dosshell/open-excel-in-two-windows-excel-2007-vista/
Mike says:
March 25, 2009 at 8:48 am (UTC -4)
Sweet! Thank you so much for this! I searched all over, saw a couple of solutions, and yours is the only one that works. That single window thing was super annoying to me… now it’s fixed! Thanks again… I really appreciate your post.
Mike
Stephan says:
August 25, 2009 at 10:25 am (UTC -4)
Thank you so much for this. The single window behavior drove me nuts and made it ridiculous to use with multiple monitors. Thank you.
Jane says:
August 27, 2009 at 6:18 pm (UTC -4)
Okay, this is helpful, but I’m very frustrated with Excel 2007. I don’t want this to happen, I want the opposite! Do you know how to undo this? Everytime I export from Oracle to Excel it opens a new application. By the end of the morning, I might have 15 open.
Nikhil says:
October 4, 2011 at 1:24 am (UTC -4)
Worked for me. Awesome stuff. I can’t for the life of me think of one good reason why they’d have multiple spreadsheets open in the same window. Was such a pain… not any more! Thanks!
Cheers