open Excel 2007 spreadsheets in different windows on XP
Posted by Jason Brundage in Microsoft Office, tags: Microsoft Office
Note: This applies to Office 2007 installed on Microsoft Windows XP .
If you are using Microsoft Vista please see open Excel 2007 worksheets in different windows on Vista
In Microsoft Office 2007 there has been many changes, like the ribbon for example.
One of the changes that is actually very troublesome for many users is how Microsoft Office 2007 documents are opened by default. For example, if you click on a Microsoft Word 2007 document, the document will open in its open Window. Then if you click on another Microsoft Word 2007 document, again the Microsoft Word 2007 document will open in its own window.
In Microsoft Excel 2007, if you click on multiple Microsoft Excel 2007spreadsheets, they will open in the same window. Incidentally, in Microsoft Outlook 2007, it will also open one Window of Microsoft Outlook 2007. If you right click on the Microsoft Outlook 2007 shortcut and remove the /recycle command line argument, that will force Microsoft Outlook 2007 to open multiple instances of Microsoft Outlook 2007 into separate windows.
(this on XP operating systems only, please go here is you are using Vista)
Continuing on with Microsoft Excel 2007, there are two ways to get around this issue.
The long way: You can click on Start, All Programs, etc. and launch Microsoft Excel 2007 multiple times. Then within each Microsoft Excel 2007 Window, you can open up the Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet of your liking. However, this is a lot of work just to open two or more windows containing separate Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets.
I prefer to double click on a Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet and have Microsoft Excel 2007 launch a separate window for each Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet that I open. In order to force Microsoft Excel 2007 to open separate windows for each spreadsheet that you double click on, do the following:
- Open my computer
- Click on Tools, then Folder Options
- Select the File Types tab
- scroll down to the XLS extension
- select advanced
- Select open
- Select Edit…
- in the line that says “Application used to perform action:” ,
go to the end of the line and add “%1″
(that would be %1 within double quotes) so for example it may read something like
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″ - uncheck Use DDE
- Do not make any other changes
- Click ok and click OK again
(note if you go back into advanced and back into the open action, you will notice DDE is checked again, however the DDE message is blank; this is fine.) - Now scroll down to XLSX
- repeat steps 5 through 11 above
- Click on Close
- Now, when you click on Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets, they will open separate windows for each Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet that is launched.
note: Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet windows will open on top of eachother, so you will have to drag the windows in order to see them.
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I had to change this as follows to get it to work:
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” “%1″ /e
instead of
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″
Thanks for the comment. I went back and double checked my setting and I noticed that the %1 was actually stripped by the OS. So interesting enough I actually only have “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e.
%1 appears to be assumed, which makes sense since that is what is happening when the OS opens a file.
So for others try “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” “%1? /e , like Stephan mentions…
Thanks again Stephen!
Bruntech
Thanks a ton guys – this was driving me absolutely up the wall. As a cross platform user (Mac, Windows), I’ve grown accustomed to the flexibility of placing windows exactly where I want them within my workspace. What was their reasoning behind this change?? [Read: What on Earth were they thinking when this idea was pitched?]
You are welcome Alan. When I first loaded Office 2007, this also drove me crazy, not being able to open more than one Excel file in different windows.
Why Microsoft forces window reuse is probably to conserve system resources… Office 2007, like Vista uses a lot of system resources.
Thank you. I can’t express how much I loathe, despise, hate, and curse the whole of Office 2007! Still, fixes like this calm my fury a little. What a horrid product 07 is. I so wish we’d go back to the days when we had customizations and options!
This is great, I have an additional problem though. My work generates a lot of txt files which we like to “Open with” Excel. This doesn’t seem to work when you do the “Open With” option. Any ideas?
(Assuming the os is Microsoft Windows XP)
When you right click on a text file (txt) and chose “open with” . Microsoft Windows XP will only display the programs that are associated to open txt files. If you click on “open with” , then select chose program, scroll down to Microsoft Excel and single click on it. If you want to make this a permanent selection check the box to “always use the selected program to open this kind of file”. You can always change this back repeating the same steps above and selecting a different program.
Yes, this works, however with the new fix that was originally discussed, using the “Open With” option doesn’t open the file in its own window.
It will work if you do the following.
If you have not done so already, associate txt files to Microsoft Excel 2007 like I mentioned above.
Open my computer, Click on Tools, then Folder Options, Select the File Types tab
scroll down to the txt extension.
click on restore ( by doing this Excel will show up automatically when you click “open with”.
Then select advanced (button changes from restore to advanced once you click on restore)
Select open
Select Edit…
uncheck DDE
click OK to save changes.. OK again… and click OK again…
you should now be at your desktop
right click on txt file and select “open with” select Excel
right click on another txt file and again select “open with” etc.
Excel should now open in multiple windows.
(I tried these steps and was able to replicate)
I have tested this on a pc in the lab many times (thinking I am losing my mind) and it works every time.
I am thinking that possibly you are missing a step..
1. Open My Computer,
2. Click on Tools,
3. then Folder Options,
4. Select the File Types tab
5. scroll down to the txt extension. (single click on txt extension)
6. select advanced
7. single click on Open
8. double click on Edit…
9. uncheck DDE (remember this is for the txt extension NOT xls)
10. click OK to save changes..
11. Click OK again…
12. Click OK again…
you should now be at your desktop
right click on txt file and select “open with” select Excel
right click on another (different) txt file and again select “open with” etc.
Excel will now open in multiple windows.
(I tried these steps and was able to replicate)
hi :)
does anyone know how to solve this issue with excel 2003 on vista ?
I did not know that this was an issue on Office 2003. The first time I have ever seen this issue was within Office 2007, specifically Excel 2007.
I did post how to resolve this using Excel on Vista here.
Jamie: I know you were still having issues, try to turn off the DDE option within Excel. (see link above, it takes you to the fix on Microsoft Vista using Excel 2007)
I sure couldn’t find this fix on Microsoft.com. Thank you for being on the web. I’ve been fighting this for weeks with ONE user that could not tolerate the slow opening files in Excel. I had to modify the settings a few times. One earlier website did not have me uncheck the DDE settings and caused other issues. I did not have to change the “%1″ and /e order, but it did automatically appear to add a %1 at the end without quotes when I unchecked the DDE settings. I was able to go back and add the quotes and it is working like a charm. Thank you again.
I just wanted to say “THANK YOU!!!” I actually had this same problem with excel 2002 aka office xp, so thank you! I wonder if my specific corporation customized it so that it would be that way or something, but it now works! Once again, thank you!
We have around 30 machines that have all been having this problem since upgrading to Office 2007. I have been fixing it by using the instructions found here. However, I think I found the actual cause of this issue (at least in my case). I found that the problem was caused by pdfmaker.xla, which ships with Adobe Acrobat and gets installed in the XLSTART folder. Go to c:\windows\program files\microsoft office\office12\xlstart, and delete (or copy/paste it to some other location) pdfmaker.xla. I also had pdfmaker.xla in the office11 folder (Left over from Excel 2003). I deleted that one too just to be safe. After deleting the file, I can open files without the delay and without doing the minimize trick. Indcidentally, I have seen numerous other stability problems result from pdfmaker.xla in Excel 2007, so by removing it you’re also eliminating several other potential problems.
This is awesome, though I just realized the only people that probably need this feature are people with dual screens like me!
- Slacker
http://www.theslackermethod.com
Excel 2007. I’m having a problem opening a file that is currently opened by another user on the network. In previous XL versions, you’d get a File in Use message. The message window would have the options or “Read Only”, “Notify”, and “Cancel”. However, in XL2007, I just get a message that the file could not be found.
I’ve verified this on several files that are in use by another user. Once the files are closed, I can open them without issue. How can I get the option to open these files as read-only the way previous versions did?
Thanks in advanced.
Paul
Thanks for this.
I’m finding some of these “features” somewhat torturous, and I do how when the useability team come back off long service leave at microsoft , whoever came up with this nonsense is redeployed into x-box dev (where aparently useability isnt welcome anyway).
Thanks a lot, I have tested this and it worked fine.
Thanks again
Again… ¡thanks a lot! ¡muchas gracias!
This was frustating since I’vs installed this version of Office…
I’m want each Excel file to open in a separate window. I tried the suggestion to remove the /recycle switch. The first issue I have with this is when installing Office 2007 with an MSI you cannot modify the properties of the shortcut.
I opened the MSP with the Office Customization Tool but this switch doesn’t show up in the ‘configure shortcuts’ section either.
I have added the %1 to the xls and xlsx files, but this only works if you launch the file before you launch Excel.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
You guys are great!
However, this workaround didn’t fix the problem for me. I’m on Office 2003 and XP.
I did try the “%1″ both before and after the /e.
So if anyone has any other ideas, thanks for passing them on!
Jeff
Hi..great job..I’ve done this before and its work..
But if you have excel 2003 installed at Vista..how it done?
Is there any way to open excel 2003 at Vista?
Because the FILE TYPES at FOLDER OPTION is missing?
Thanx
Thanks for the tip! It works great. I was looking for a way to do this, but I didn’t think of going to the file associations and putting it on the command line.
For those of you that don’t like the Office 2007 interface – learn how to use the Customize Quick Access Toolbar feature. It’s the little down-arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar. I just put most functions that I use a lot onto this toolbar.
Thanks for the ’solution’ Jason – it ‘works’ for me but created another problem. I followed the instructions step by step. The spreadsheets now open in different windows if I access them from Recent History after opening Excel.
However, when I try to open any spreadsheet on my PC directly by double clicking on it, I get these 3 error messages in a row and the spreadsheet doesn’t open (screenshot of the 3 sequential error messages below) – I’m sure it’s something simple but how do I fix it please?
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3530/errormessages.jpg
Problem fixed by adding a space before the “%1″
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e“%1? – created the problem above
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1? – WORKS
—–
cheers
This works fine n 2003 when you double click on a file to open it w/ Excel. However, it does not work when you open a file using the “File” -> “Open” menu from within an open Excel window. This also does not allow you to copy and paste between two sheets because they are open with two separate instances of Excel. Anyone know a way around these two problems?
Thanks,
Hello,
I did all the steps and now I can open excel 2007 files in different window. It works great. But now I have a problem because whenever I open an Excel 2003 or before file, it gives me a bunch of errors.
Its pretty weird cuz it takes the whole path in segments and opens it like that.
For example lets say the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\MyFile.xls
It gives me different erors such as “C:\Program.xlsx” could not be found.
then “Files\Microsoft.xlsx” could not be found.
then “Office\MyFile.xls” coould not be found.
Could anyone please help me out?
Hey, sorry guys I hadnt seen the above messages. I added the space and this problem was fixed. Thanks a lot
It is easier to add Excel to your (rt click) context “Send To” menu. This works for Excel 2003/2007, both Vist and XP… and there is less room for error.
I am going CRAZY! I followed the steps above. Now, each spreadsheet opens in its own window (most of the time). But, they still don’t work like they did in 2003. It’s still a window in a window. If I hit the expand button the excel window gets bigger but then I have to drag the spread sheet window bigger too. Two extra steps. Plus down at the bottom all of my open spread sheets say Microsoft excel instead of the name of the spread sheet. This is very frustrating because I am working with multiple spreadsheet all of the time.
What are the other boxes supposed to say?? DDE and DDE application?
Can anyone help me!! Please.
Problem: I’m getting a File in Use error saying “PERSONAL.XLSB is locked for editing”. Then it tells me to select read only or cancel. The error always calls the file “PERSONAL.XLSB” regardless of the actual file name.
I used the following version of the fix:
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” “%1? /e
When I try to remove the “%1″ and go back to the way it was, nothing works. Please help!
This doesn’t really make 2007 function like previous versions when opening multiple files. In the past when you opened multiple files they had their own window but functioned as a single instance of excel. This is confirmed by using the right-click move or copy option on a worksheet tab. In the past all windows/workbooks would be listed allowing you to move the sheet to any open workbook (if you forced the workbooks to open in new instances this wouldn’t work). In 2007 the move or copy feature does not list workbooks in separate windows. I am lookign for a fix that allows multiple windows to function like a single instance.
Hi Ed,
Thanks for your comments. Please post if you figure out the fix. I don’t know what their objective was, but I think the only thing they accomplished was to raise the blood pressure of thousands of users!
gypcjes
Just wanted to let you know the fix worked like a charm.
As for the people who want to open multible books inside one window, couldn’t they just reverse the steps above and take out the “%1?, instead of adding it?
Just a thought. I haven’t tried it but i would like to know if works.
thanks for everything guys but i like to be able to open the file by doble clicking on it , if its posoble can someone tell me please, or how do i put everything back the way it was .
can someone pls help?? i have created an excel spreadsheet with about 6 pages and every page has some formatting and formulas. it worked wonderfully in XP. not slow at all!! along comes *&^%&^vista and the same spreadsheet takes forever to to anything ( i am talking, open, calculate, deleting some text, or even a line). i have saved the document as xls workbook and it still happens. it is like pulling teeth every single day!
thanks for the fix – worked great for opening files from explorer, but what about opening files from the Recent Documents list within Excel? Those are still opening in the same window.
thanks!
Wow, thank you very much… This has been driving me crazy for a long time, and after a somewhat obscure google search I found your website… Your directs worked perfectly for me.
Thank you :)
Thanks for the tip, it worked the way Stephen suggested.
However, the minimized excel documents on the taskbar do not show the name of the document, because they say Microsoft Excel- doc name, and all I see is the part before the doc name.
It can be annoying when I have 3 open and need to jump back and forth and try to remember which one’s which.
does everyone else have the same issue? is there a solution?
Brilliant! Multiple screen Excel use, here I come!!
Okay – so not only does the issue persist with the recent documents list, it also happens when I launch a file from a SharePoint site.
Are there different extennsions I need to modify?
microsoft bunch of idiots!
Thanks for the fix it seems Microsoft ddon’t listen to the users as oppose to Apple therefore MS sucks!
Thanks so much Jason, I was googling for solution since morning and ultimately found it.
I am operating with XP. I am unable to open Excel or Word files from 2007. Advise?
Very good tip for the very annoying feature of excel 07. Thanks so much!
Has anyone found a fix like this for windows 7?
Does anyone know how to undo this? I did it (for the separate windows benefit) but then I am unable to move/copy sheets between open workbooks, presumably the NetDDE does this. Now when I double-click an Excel file, I get “file not found” errors but I am able to use the “File | Open” method…
Thank you very much Jason. I really can’t help but shower you with praises.
Abhi
I’d like to know how to undo it also, removing the “%1″ creates errors.
Thanks
- I tried it, and have had the same problem referenced above (sequence of error messages).
- I tried changing the order of the /e and the “%1″, no luck
- I tried making sure there was a space before the “%1″, no luck
I’m wondering if a reboot is required between changes of this nature? Or at least closing Excel first? I’m in the camp asking for how to undo it, too, since it is of limited value with the double-clicking errors problem