Excel - New documents in new windows?

[Zaxxon]

My first OO knowledgebase search! Let's see if we're as knowledgeable as GG was...

Does anyone know of a way to make Excel open successively-opened workbooks in new windows? The default (and only, so far as I can tell) option is to have successive workbooks open in the same mother Excel instance. Sure they get their own taskbar entry, but they're displayed in the 'main' Excel window. Our situation is this: we have dual displays on many of our machines now, and Excel is doing its best to make them useless when trying to open 2 excel workbooks, one on each display. For 'normal' documents, we can just open Excel twice, and open one workbook in each (still a pain!). However, we also have a document management application, the only way to open documents out of which is to double-click, in which case they all open in the same Excel instance. So we're unable to open two workbooks out of this program in separate windows.

Anyone smrtr than me??

[The Meal]

It happens to me completely at random (Win 2000 SP4 on my work machine). I'd love to have someone explain to me *why* sometimes a second file opens it its own Excel window.

~Neal

[Zaxxon]

*silence fills the void*

[The Preacher]

I looked around but couldn't find anything. Sorry.

[Freezer-TPF-]

Which version of Excel? I'm not sure I understand your question exactly, but Excel 2000 automatically opens new workbooks in separate main Excel windows (and so does Word 2000). I don't think 97 did that, and I don't think newer versions do that either (which I assume you have) but I could be wrong (I recall a lot of people hating the way 2000 did it). I'm not sure how to change that behavior either way.

[is_dead]

yeah, I think it's just a version thing. I agree it would be nice to be able to switch the option. When I'm working with multiple excel docs I'd want them on the task bar with the file names. When I'm working with Word and have many programs open, but have a couple excel docs open for cutting and pasting, then I'd prefer to the excel docs under one tab.

[Zaxxon]

It's Excel 2003, although XP does the same thing. The windows *do* have separate taskbar entries (this is configurable), but all are contained in the same actual window (which confuses the issue even more--are they separate, or aren't they?).

What I want is separate taskbar entries, separate windows. Garr! Bad UI - the bane of my existance!

[Freezer-TPF-]

You can go back to Excel 2000, but that's probably not an option for you.

[Zaxxon]

You can go back to Excel 2000, but that's probably not an option for you.

Not so much. You'd think MS would have gotten complaints about this...

[EvilHomer3k]

I'll tell you the answer if you admit that you love IE better than Opera.

Once you have admitted it, read the text below:

Create a shortcut to Excel. It should look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" "c:\work\contacts.xls" /a

The /a switch tells excel to open in a new window. You need the path to excel and the path to the file to get this to work. You will probably have to make some changes to the document management application to get it to use shortcuts like this since it probably doesn't work the same.

Here's the knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q230684/
It is a word KB article but it has some good info.

[Zaxxon]

*snip*

I know how to get around it in special cases--the problem is that I *can't* make changes to the doc management app; I have to change *Excel*.

<returns to banging head against the wall>

PS - IE sucks.

And unfortunately, /a is not a valid Excel 2003 startup switch. Nuts.

[Biyobi]

OK, long drawn out method (there's no other kind):

Open up Windows Explorer and go to the directory where Excel is installed.

Create a shortcut to excel.exe (It has to be done from here. I can't get it to work any other way) Feel free to move the shortcut to the desktop and rename it.

Now modify the Target of the shorcut using EH3K's guidelines (without the /a). This should open a new instance of Excel.

This works for me in Excel XP and 2003.

[Zaxxon]

I can do these things; that's not the point. What I have to do is make *Excel* open documents in a new window. Shortcuts are great, but the problem here is that I need double-clicking an ordinary XLS file to automatically open that file in a new window. Grr to MS.

[GuidoTKP]

Zax, I know my firm's doc management system (iManage v. 6) allows you to use File | Open from within the application and brings up an integrated interface that allows you to open files stored on the DMS server (as opposed to using the DMS client interface). If your system supports something similar, couldn't you fire up a new instance of Excel per Biyobi's instructions and pull in the file you need that way?

[Zaxxon]

Zax, I know my firm's doc management system (iManage v. 6) allows you to use File | Open from within the application and brings up an integrated interface that allows you to open files stored on the DMS server (as opposed to using the DMS client interface). If your system supports something similar, couldn't you fire up a new instance of Excel per Biyobi's instructions and pull in the file you need that way?

Yes. Unfortunately, ours doesn't support anything such.

[GuidoTKP]

Zax, I know my firm's doc management system (iManage v. 6) allows you to use File | Open from within the application and brings up an integrated interface that allows you to open files stored on the DMS server (as opposed to using the DMS client interface). If your system supports something similar, couldn't you fire up a new instance of Excel per Biyobi's instructions and pull in the file you need that way?

Yes. Unfortunately, ours doesn't support anything such.

There's your problem, then. Your DMS blows!

[Zaxxon]

Yes. In terms of DM. However it offers much more than that in terms of aiding our accounting staff, so the overall package contains a bit less suck.

But this aspect certainly does stink up the place.

[GuidoTKP]

Yes. In terms of DM. However it offers much more than that in terms of aiding our accounting staff, so the overall package contains a bit less suck.

But this aspect certainly does stink up the place.

You should be their marketing guy ....

[Zaxxon]

Yes. In terms of DM. However it offers much more than that in terms of aiding our accounting staff, so the overall package contains a bit less suck.

But this aspect certainly does stink up the place.

You should be their marketing guy ....

:p

[EvilHomer3k]

Maybe this will fix your problem. With Excel there are ways around the SDI/MDI problems but they involve command line switches. It is unfortunate that your DMS can't do the switches but that's how it works.

/a is perfectly valid. Make sure it is outside of the quotes. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/210565 It is a word article but I tried it several times and it worked every time once the shortcut was correct.

[Zaxxon]

Homer: let me get this straight. With Excel 2002 or 2003, you are modifying your XLS file association to add the /a shortcut, which then makes double-clicking Excel files open them in separate windows? This is what I need to happen, and your instructions simply don't work; /a isn't even a relevant option for Word, much less Excel... Am I just misunderstanding you?

Opening a straight shortcut to Excel will always open a separate instance (and thus separate windows) even without any switches. This doesn't help me; a shortcut to Excel does me no good; I need xls files to open in a new window when they're invoked from Windows.

[EvilHomer3k]

What I'm saying is that you can do it through a shortcut and you can't do it any other way short of modifying the source code for Excel. That's how excel works. So, you need to change how Excel works, change you DMS, or switch to another program.

The shortcuts work fine but that is the only way besides opening another instance of excel manually to open two instances of excel.

[Zaxxon]

What I'm saying is that you can do it through a shortcut and you can't do it any other way short of modifying the source code for Excel. That's how excel works. So, you need to change how Excel works, change you DMS, or switch to another program.

The shortcuts work fine but that is the only way besides opening another instance of excel manually to open two instances of excel.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the shortcuts-- /a doesn't do anything. A regular Excel shortcut to a file without the bogus /a switch does precisely the same thing as the same shortcut with the /a switch added. That is, it opens a new instance of Excel with the target document in it. /a makes no difference.

And I'm not yet convinced that there's no way to do it; if you can do it with a shortcut, you should be able to modify the Windows file association settings to make a double-click do the same as targetting a shortcut. Just have to figger out how now...

[Freezer-TPF-]

In the file type/association settings for XLS files, can you edit the "open" action in the advance settings area to do what you want? For instance, I just looked and the DDE setting on my machine for the open action on XLS files is: [open("%1")] . I'm wondering if there is a way to edit the DDE setting to get the behavior you want, but I don't know what the right strings/switches would be.

[Zaxxon]

In the file type/association settings for XLS files, can you edit the "open" action in the advance settings area to do what you want? For instance, I just looked and the DDE setting on my machine for the open action on XLS files is: [open("%1")] . I'm wondering if there is a way to edit the DDE setting to get the behavior you want, but I don't know what the right strings/switches would be.

Yes; I just edited the main 'program' entry to "C:\program files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Excel.exe" "%1". This does exactly what I want--double-clicking XLS files now opens a separate instance for each one.

Unfortunately, my #@@%ing DMS program seems to have hard-coded its method of opening the files, as they still work the old way from within the program. GRR!