Try this:

Open Windows Explorer
Select "Tools"
Select "Folder Options"
Select the "File Types" Tab
Scroll down to find and select the XLS extension
Click the "Advanced" Button
Select the "Open" action from the list
Click the "Edit..." Button
Where is says "Application used to perform action:"
If not already there, add:

/e "%1"

to the end of the file path
Uncheck the "Use DDE" box
Click OK
Click OK
Click Close

That should do it.

HTH,
Elkar


"maysi01" wrote:

Office 2003. This was asked before, but the answer was for a different
question and (strangely) the questioner was happy. I really don't care about
icons in my task bar. I want each spreadsheet in a DIFFERENT WINDOW. So
that when I close one, ONLY THAT DOCUMENT IS CLOSED/SAVED. Another answer
gave me one way to do this: force separate instances of Excel with
Start-Run-"Excel", but now I have to navigate through (say) 15 directories
to find each document to open instead of just double-clicking. EVERY TIME I
have multiple documents open and attempt to close one of them by clicking the
go-away box on the Window (yes I know I can use the go-away box on the
sub-pane for the document, but this is different from EVERY OTHER PIECE OF
SOFTWARE IN EXISTENCE, so I always forget), the Save/Abandon question
probably actually refers to a non-current document, but I ALWAYS miss this,
because logically, it is the current document in front of me, and I don't
want to be asked questions about other documents. The result is that I lose
changes almost every time I have multiple documents open. Word uses this
paradigm, and Excel can physically do it, but can it be configured to do it
by default (when I double-click on the second .xls file) ?