The following:
flying window R (to see the Windows start button|Run dialog
type in:
excel
and hit enter
is a perfect workaround. Thanks!

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

With tools|options|general tab|"Ignore other applications" checked, I can click
on a shortcut to excel and a second instance will start.

And be aware that turning this setting off sometimes gives errors with workbooks
that contain spaces in their path/name:

C:\my documents\excel\my book.xls

The error will look kind of like:
cannot find c:\my ..
then
cannot find documents\excel\my
then
cannot find book.xls

But you can always File|open within any instance of excel.

===
Sometimes, I'll just start a second instance by:
flying window R (to see the Windows start button|Run dialog
type in:
excel
and hit enter.



CoffeeAdict wrote:

Is there a way to open a truly independant instance of Excel - rather then
another sub-window within the master window? This would solve this problem.

As an aside - I suspect that if I had 2 identical monitors it would be less
significant as you can display one window across the 2 screens but as I have
a laptop and a monitor I really want to size the 2 windows differently (as
appropriate for each monitor).

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

I don't own two monitors, but try starting a second instance of excel to see if
that helps.



CoffeeAdict wrote:

Using multiple monitors (laptop screen + monitor in my case) Word allows you
to have 2 documents open - one in each monitor). This would be VERY useful
in Excel when trying to compare woorksheets.

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson