You can do that but you will have to open every single Excel file that you
open in a separate instance of Excel.
Example, you open up Excel and then open up Book1. If now you want to open
up Book2 you can NOT just click on file / open. You will have to start Excel
again by either following Start / Programs / Excel or double-clicking the
Excel icon on your desktop, etc and then open up Book2. Now you have 2
separate instances of Excel, each with one workbook open. When you close the
Excel instance that has Book1 open, the instance with Book2 open remains.

Not sure why you want to do this though (unless you have some macro
automation with other Microsoft products ex, Access). You can just close the
individual workbooks in Excel and still leave Excel up and running with
whatever other workbooks are already open in the same instance.

"Waterboy" wrote:

When I open an excel document, excel opens the document in the same instance
of excel. When you close excel, it closes all open workbooks. I would like
to be able to close the instance of excel that I am working in (by hitting
the top X) and continue to work on seperate excel documents that are open.
This works in Word, but not in excel. Any ideas on how to fix this one?
Thank you!