Opening two separate instances of Excel
 

My users (who are accountants) use dual monitors and would like to open a
different Excel file on each monitor for the purposes of reviewing changes
between the two. I know that one method of doing this is by opening Excel
twice with its shortcut, then highlighting one Excel window and opening an
Excel file, then highlighting the other window and opening the other Excel
file. Unfortunately, the software that my users use to organize the Excel
files does not allow this to be done; it always opens every Excel file in the
first Excel window no matter which instance is highlighted. We had a similar
problem with Adobe Acrobat, but there is a command line switch that forces
Acrobat to open a new instance for each file.
Is there a similar switch for Excel, or some other method of forcing Excel
to open a new instance of itself for each file? We are running Excel 2003 on
Windows XP. Thank you in advance for your replies.

You might try going into the file associations (via Windows Explorer -
Tools, Folder Options, File Types) and for XLS files eliminate "uses DDE"
from the Open command. Replace it with a " %1" on the command line (after
the "/e").

--
Jim
"Ron Bishop" wrote in message
...
| My users (who are accountants) use dual monitors and would like to open a
| different Excel file on each monitor for the purposes of reviewing changes
| between the two. I know that one method of doing this is by opening Excel
| twice with its shortcut, then highlighting one Excel window and opening an
| Excel file, then highlighting the other window and opening the other Excel
| file. Unfortunately, the software that my users use to organize the Excel
| files does not allow this to be done; it always opens every Excel file in
the
| first Excel window no matter which instance is highlighted. We had a
similar
| problem with Adobe Acrobat, but there is a command line switch that forces
| Acrobat to open a new instance for each file.
| Is there a similar switch for Excel, or some other method of forcing Excel
| to open a new instance of itself for each file? We are running Excel 2003
on
| Windows XP. Thank you in advance for your replies.

just what I was looking for and this one actually does work as prescribed!!
Thanks Jim and thanks to Ron for asking the question.
--
Thanks,
Ted


"Jim Rech" wrote:

You might try going into the file associations (via Windows Explorer -
Tools, Folder Options, File Types) and for XLS files eliminate "uses DDE"
from the Open command. Replace it with a " %1" on the command line (after
the "/e").

--
Jim
"Ron Bishop" wrote in message
...
| My users (who are accountants) use dual monitors and would like to open a
| different Excel file on each monitor for the purposes of reviewing changes
| between the two. I know that one method of doing this is by opening Excel
| twice with its shortcut, then highlighting one Excel window and opening an
| Excel file, then highlighting the other window and opening the other Excel
| file. Unfortunately, the software that my users use to organize the Excel
| files does not allow this to be done; it always opens every Excel file in
the
| first Excel window no matter which instance is highlighted. We had a
similar
| problem with Adobe Acrobat, but there is a command line switch that forces
| Acrobat to open a new instance for each file.
| Is there a similar switch for Excel, or some other method of forcing Excel
| to open a new instance of itself for each file? We are running Excel 2003
on
| Windows XP. Thank you in advance for your replies.