BleepingComputer.com: Annoying Excel tic

Hi everybody,

I run Windows 7 and have Microsoft Office 2010.

Here's the problem. At times I want to work on several spreadsheets at once. And it worked before but now it will only open on spread sheet at a time. Now when I have more than one spreadsheet open in the taskbar, I can only have one open at a time on the screen. What's up with this, and who thought it was a good idea to program Excel this way?


Circa_clown

This post has been edited by circa_clown: 01 April 2011 - 01:44 AM

I have Office 2010 and I have Win 7 but unfortunately don't have Office 2010 installed on a Win 7 machine so I can't exactly duplicate what you have. Are you trying to run multiple instances of Excel or are you opening multiple windows (workbooks) within the same instance of Excel?

When running multiple instances of Excel in Win 7, you can most certainly have them open at the same time. However, if the instances are all full-screen, you have to re-size the windows to be able to see more than 1 at a time.

If you are opening multiple workbooks within Excel, you can use the View Tab where there are options to arrange your open windows, select a particular window, split windows, etc...

I am trying to run multiple instances of excel. Know how to toggle the various views that they have but that's not what I'm looking for. The closest thing they have to what I need is the 2 workbook side by side view. But that comes in the same window.

What I am looking for is a 2 separate instances (2 separate windows) open at the same time. I often resize my workbooks while I work on separate ones, so if the workbooks are in the same window this does not work.

I've gone to youtube and one guy on there showed how it was done but it did not work on my computer. He's tried to help me too in the comment box but nothing worked. And I can't really reinstall it because I don't have the box anymore.

What is stopping you from running multiple instances of Excel if that's what you want to do? Just invoke Excel twice. I don't understand the issue.

It will not let me open 2 separate windows of excel. It forces me to open all instance of excel inside of one window like at the beginning of the video. It gets to be counterproductive for me to work like that.
For example, if you go to the change views, all it does is help you change the views inside the window.

I am looking to open separate instances of excel. For example, say I wanna read and play games on 2 different instance of firefox. I would make one window smaller and then play games on the other one, also making it smaller so they would both fit on the screen.

That is what I am looking to do but Excel will not open two separate ones. He manages to do it at the end of the video but it does not work for me.

The only thing I can think of that you may be running into is that in Win 7, when you have a program icon pinned to the Task Bar and you click on it, it doesn't open a new instance of the program as it did with the Quick Launch bar in XP. You have to right-click on the icon and one of the options is to start a new instance. How are you trying to start the second instance of Excel?

This post has been edited by strolln: 12 April 2011 - 10:37 AM

Holding Shift and clicking on the icon opens another instance of it too in Windows 7.

Ikegley9,

You have solved the whole problem! Thanks buddy, really appreciate the help.

circa_clown, on 08 May 2011 - 12:02 AM, said:

That's interesting since Ikegley9 essentially told you the same thing I told you 3 weeks ago!

Glad you got it working.

BTW, this isn't an Excel thing, it's the way Win 7 works.

This post has been edited by strolln: 08 May 2011 - 12:21 PM

strolln,

I looked over all the advice you sent me and I could not find one instance where you told me to hold shift as I tried to open a new instance. That's what worked.

But thanks for the help. It's really appreciated.

Shift + click on the icon does the exact same thing as right-click on the icon and select Excel to start a new instance. It's the same thing but a different way of doing it. One method involves using only the mouse while the other involves using the mouse and keyboard. My preference is the mouse only method but everyone is different. The main thing that I was trying to get you to understand is that Win 7 works differently than XP in that you can't just click on the icon in the Taskbar to start a new instance.

Here's a 3rd way of starting a new instance. With Excel running, open the Start menu, find Excel and click on it. Voila, you have another instance of Excel.