This may help (or hurt).

If you open files by double clicking on them in windows explorer....

You could try:

Tools|options|General tab|Ignore other applications (check it)

Then double click on the workbook in windows explorer.

And be aware that turning this setting on 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

Or it may just open excel and not show you the file that you clicked on.

tcom wrote:

The thing is, I was able to do this before I upgraded to Office 2003. I
didn't have to do all this round about stuff to view two docs maximized on
different monitors. The thing is, on some computers I use with the same
version of Office, some will allow me to do this, while others don't. So it
has to be something in the configuration.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

I don't use multiple monitors.

But there have been a few posts that starting separate instances of excel will
do what you want.

To be able to start a second instance, you can create a new shortcut on your
desktop that points to excel.exe.

Then use file|open to open any workbook you want.

Be aware that working with two workbooks in separate instances does make life
tougher and things may not work the way you expect. (Copying formulas from one
workbook to another workbook, for instance.)

tcom wrote:

I have two monitors and like to have two documents open and maximized at the
same time to compate and what not. I can do this in Word but not in Excel
nor Powerpoint. "Windows in the Taskbar" doens't do this. It's got to be an
option or something. I was able to do this in Excel in the past.

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson