If you're really opening multiple instances of excel, that's your problem.

Open those two workbooks the normal way. Then in one of the applications, click
on window (on the menubar). Do you see both workbooks at the bottom of that
list? If you don't, then you really have two instances running.

And those two instances are separate and distinct. They don't talk to each
other. Just like leaving excel and going to notepad/word/solitaire, then coming
back to excel won't cause that workbook_active code to fire, neither will going
to another instance of excel.

I think you want to open both files in one instance of excel. But you can turn
on windows in taskbar so that it looks like it does now. (Tools|Options|view
tab|windows in taskbar).

Then swapping between different workbooks in the same instance of excel will do
what you want.

If you click on an excel icon and it starts a new instance (check under window),
you should be able to change this behavior by either:

Close Excel and
Start|Run
excel.exe /regserver

The /regserver stuff resets the windows registry to excel's factory defaults.

If that doesn't work, try:
Try Tools|Options|General|Ignore other applications (uncheck it)

Gavin Frayne wrote:

hi folks,

i've got a bit of a wriggler here. any help would be appreciated.

in excel 2000 each workbook is opened in its own excel instance i.e.. i open
file1.xls and file2.xls and i can see both on the taskbar and can use
alt+tab to switch between them.

i have written some custom menus in file1.xls which are added in the
workbook_activate event and removed in the workbook_deactivate event. thus,
in theory, when i switch between file1 and file2, the menus should appear in
file1 and dissapear when i return to file2. this is however not the case. if
i use the mouse to click on the instances in the task bar, there is no
problem. however, if i use alt+tab, some of the time the menus are
activated, and some of the time they aren't.

i can't seem to find anything that this problem could be connected to. even
if i use the following simple code in file1:

Private Sub Workbook_Activate()
MsgBox "workbook is active"
End Sub

and have file2 is a new document, i still get the problem. i switch with
alt+tab from file1 to file2, and when i switch back, the msgbox is not
displayed.

i have noticed in the news groups that there are a number of people who have
built custom menus. do you also have this problem, or haven't you noticed
it, or doesn't it bother you? i like to work with the keyboard and it would
be great if i could get this working. i have already tried to using the
sheet_activate and window_activate events but they have same effect. does
anyone know which event i need to use in order to _always_ trigger my macro
when i move between windows or files?

regards,
gavin

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Dave Peterson