grep life by Jeremy Glover

Create Multiple Windows in Excel

Part of my job entails working with multiple Excel spreadsheets simultaneously. You would think with four monitors I would have no trouble. For whatever reason, Microsoft decided that Excel will open all spreadsheets in the same instance of Excel, causing it to be nearly impossible to quickly glance back and forth between sheets.

Here’s the quick fix, thanks to Brian on Google Answers:

1. Open Windows Explorer (win + E)
2. Click on Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types -> XLSX -> Advanced -> “Open” -> Edit
   (note, if you’re using an older version of Excel it may be XLS instead of XLSX)
3. Change “Application used to perform action:” to \EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″
   (note, you must have quotes around %1)
4. Uncheck “Use DDE”
5. Click “OK”

Voila! Now each time you open a spreadsheet from Windows Explorer it will open in an entirely new instance of Microsoft Excel that you can move to another monitor, minimize separately, etc.

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