you COULD open workbook2 from File/Open, rather than double-clicking in
windows explorer.

"StephanieH" wrote in message
...
My coworker is having a hard time getting more than one workbook to open
in a
single instance of Excel. It seems that no matter how we try to open the
second workbook, a new instance of Excel is opened.

"Ignore other applications" is not selected in Tools - Options.

For kicks I tried selecting that as an option and it made no difference.
Excel continued to open a new instance with every new file.

Any suggestions?