I use two monitors for my laptop. If I launch two instances of Excel, I can
drag one instance to the other monitor and work in two spreadsheets maximized
at one time. My coworker's Excel, on the other hand, opens one instance of
Excel, and all spreadsheets open in the same instance, and are each listed in
the "Windows" menu. So the only way she can view both sheets at one time is
to spread Excel over the length of both monitors and then arrange the windows
side-by-side within the same instance. Looking at previous posts, I thought
the solution was Tools - Options - View - Windows in Taskbar. However, hers
is already checked, the same as mine. In fact, we can't find any settings
that look any different between her setup and mine. Any ideas?

TIA

ToolsOptionsGeneral "Ignore other applications" should do the trick and open
more than one instance of Excel.

Watch out you don't get too many instances or you will bog down.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:40:01 -0800, RRozsa
wrote:

I use two monitors for my laptop. If I launch two instances of Excel, I can
drag one instance to the other monitor and work in two spreadsheets maximized
at one time. My coworker's Excel, on the other hand, opens one instance of
Excel, and all spreadsheets open in the same instance, and are each listed in
the "Windows" menu. So the only way she can view both sheets at one time is
to spread Excel over the length of both monitors and then arrange the windows
side-by-side within the same instance. Looking at previous posts, I thought
the solution was Tools - Options - View - Windows in Taskbar. However, hers
is already checked, the same as mine. In fact, we can't find any settings
that look any different between her setup and mine. Any ideas?

TIA

Is this a good idea? It disables DDE functionality.

Yes, it allows you to open multiple instances of Excel, but I can't even select a worksheet from my Start menu's DOCUMENTS list and have it launch Excel and load the selected worksheet.

Won't this also foul up merge capabilities with Word?

BTW, if you simply launch multiple instances of Excel, and then load the desired worksheets in the individual instances, you will fix your problem.

It's just a bit more cumbersome than being able to double-click on a file name and have it open in a separate window, but it works and you preserve DDE functionality.