Hi,

I'm using excel 2000 and I coudl swear that until today, when I
dbl-clicked on various shortcuts on my desktop or explorer to xls
files, each would open a new instance of excel, so I could move the
individual windows around my desktop or close one and the others would
remain open.

Tonight, however, this isn't the case. All the shortcuts I click on,
open a new excel file, but they all open within a single instance of
excel. The taskbar shows as many excel buttons as files I have open,
which is fine, but I want them to be actually separate instances or at
least windows that I can move around individually.

Any way to accomplish this?

Just to be on the safe side, I already ran excel.exe /regserver and
that didn't help either.

I also tried checking the "ignore other applications" box in
tools/options/general, which resulted in excel starting up when I'd
click on a shortcut but the document itself not being open (I'd get a
gray screen in excel's client area). Exactly what does this option do
and how does it affect me?

I also had some real weirdness when double clicking on files with
multi-word names in explorer (i.e. "alex to do.xls" would give me an
error because "alex.xls" couldn't be opened, then "to.xls" and finally
"do.xls").

What I'd like to see happen is that if I have 3 shortcuts on my desktop
to separate excel documents, and I double click on each of them, each
opens a new instance of excel.

Interestingly, this is the way Word behaves in this computer, and I
honestly hope that I'm not hallucinating when I say that that's how
excel behaved until tonight.

Thank you for your help!!!!

Alex