Excel and Windows Vista Tip: Opening Excel in Multiple Windows (Especially Useful for Dual Monitors)

Because of the way Excel interfaces with other applications, it is limited to opening all of its workbooks in one window. It does however provide a separate tab for every workbook that is open, and on a single monitor it does appear to be separate windows as you minimize and maximize each workbook individually, but you are still unable to have two workbooks open at the same time on the screen. On a dual monitor (or more) you will find that your workbooks are constrained in a single monitor and you are unable to separate two different workbooks to separate monitors.

There are drawbacks of separating your workbooks into separate windows. For one, copying and pasting formulas from the cells will not work; one way around this is to copy and paste the formula from the formula bar. Another drawback is each "separate" workbook in its own window is a separate instance of Excel and depending on the complexity of the workbooks; this can consume a lot of system resources. It is recommended to only open up 2 or 3 instances of Excel at any one given time.

Option 1: Create a "Open With" right click option

1. Open a Explorer Window and navigate to" C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 " (alternativly you can press/hold the windows button and press the "r" button to bring up the run command and copy and paste C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 and press "OK")

2. Right click a blank area of folder and select "New > Text Document". You will be prompted to name the file with "New Text Document" highlighted, go ahead and highlight everything "New Text Document.txt" and name it DualExcel.bat and press enter. You will imeadiatly be prompted with as dialog box asking "Are you sure you want to change it?" along with a warning about changing the file name extension, press "Yes". (If you happen to click off of the new text document before naming it, you can right click "New Text Document.txt" in the Office12 folder and select "Rename").

3. Right click DualExcel.bat and select "Edit", the file will open with Notepad.

4. Either copy and paste, or type in:

@echo off
@start /d "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12" EXCEL.EXE /e %1
@exit

5. Choose "File" > "Save" in Notepad's toolbar, then exit out of Notepad.

6. Now to add DualExcel.bat to your "Open With" menu. Find a Excel file, Right Click and choose "Open With" > "Choose Default Program...", a "Open With" Dialog box will appear. The first thing you want to do is uncheck the box that states "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file", and then choose "Browse" located to the right of that check box. In the new dialog box, by default it should open the "Program Files" folder, double click into "Microsoft Office" folder, and then Double Click into the "Office12" folder. Now highlight the "DualExcel.bat" file and press the "Open" button. You will be brought back to the "Open With" dialog box, make sure the DualExcel.bat option is highlighted and press the "OK" button.

7. Now the "DualExcel.bat" option will always be availible when you Right Click on a Excel file and choose "Open With". By using the "Open With" option, for this to work, you will have to Open With the DualExcel.bat on two or more Excel Files.

Option 2: Always have Files open with the DualExcel.bat feature.

Follow all the same steps as Option 1, with the exception of unchecking the box "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file", make sure that this check box has a check mark in it. You will also want to make sure that both Excel file formats ( xls and and xlsx ) by going through this procedure with both file formats.

These options only work for double clicking on a file. If you open Excel through the Start menu, it will open Excel normally. If you want a shortcut to open Excel with these features without opening a file. Right click a blank area on your desktop and choose "New" > "Shortcut". Hit the "Browse" button, and press the arrow next to "Computer" > "Local Disk (C:)" > "Program Files" > "Microsoft Office" > "Office12", highlight "DualExcel.bat" and press "OK". Then when prompted for the name of the shortcut, call it "Dual Excel" and press the "Finish" button.

Published by Alan Callahan on 09/10/2009
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