open Excel 2007 spreadsheets in different windows on XP
Posted by: Jason Brundage in Microsoft Office, tags: Microsoft OfficeNote: 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!
How would you reverse the action
Mark: Go back and follow the steps above but revert back. For example, remove any characters you added and check any boxes that you unchecked.
Can you post more details of what it is you are having problems with?
at first when I would open excel it would try to open every tab on the workbook and have an error message “not found” and at the end would eventually open the workbook. Everytime I erase the “%1″ and check or uncheck the DDE and enter the info that was in there before and close out of that it won’t open excel. It also will put back the “%1″ at the end of the file name even though I erased it before
Guys BiG Thany YOU! Works like a charm.
Your are very welcome. I am glad to see that other people benefit from tips/tricks that I have posted! Feel free to submit a tip or fix that you have discovered.
Do you have to be logged in as an administrator for this tweak to work? I can get the “%1″ to apply, however, the DDE box will not stay unchecked. I cannot log in as an administrator, not even a power user, due to restrictions imposed by my employer. Thanks.
Yes, unfortunately Eric you do have to have administrator rights to change the behavior of file types.
I have the same problem as Mark - if I try to double click on an excel file, I get several pop-up messages:
“C:\documents\xls” could not be found.
“and.xls” could not be found.
“list.xls” could not be found.
And then I am unable to actually see the document I tried to open
I have tried to go back into my computer and undo what was suggested above, and the %1 is still there every time I try to delete it and hit OK.
However, I am able to open files if I go through Excel to open it, but not if I double click on the icon. Unfortunately I still get multiple files to open in the same window….
if you had a tip jar i would tip you. thank you for this post.
For all those with:
“C:\documents\xls” could not be found.
“and.xls” could not be found.
“list.xls” could not be found.
errors.
Mind the “%1″ instead of %1. And read more careful in the future ;)
For those who cannot get the registry to work or do not have permission to change their registry and need an immediate solution, open the files from a command prompt. To do this go to start, type cmd, press enter. Enter the command start excel.exe “C:\my file.xls” and press enter. Replace C:\file.xls with the path and filename of your excel document and don’t forget to enclose it in parenthesis if there are spaces anywhere (my example uses a space for reference). Repeat for the second file and so on. If you’ll be doing this regularly, considering entering these all into a batch file (text file with a .bat extension) and double clicking it instead.
Of course the more permanent and easily used option going forth is the registry but this works for a solid second place in my opinion. (confirmed working in my Vista SP1, Excel 2007 environment)
My excel has always been fine until i looked at some microsoft templates. Afterwards i cannot view in 2 different windows. I have done the “%1″ trick at both locations mentioned above and no change. I question i do have is that there appears to be some spaces i may be missing. Does anyone have the complete idiots version of how this is done?
One way I found that works, without making all the nregistry changes, is to open excel BEFORE double clicking on an .xls file. If excel is already open (even if it’s minimized), double clicking on an .xls file works like we expect it would (from the office 2003 days).
(using Windows XP Pro SP2, Office 2007)
BTW: I HATE OFFICE 2007
Thanks so much! This works great when opening from windows explorer or from the desktop. But more often than not, I’m opening documents via links in Sharepoint. When I open multiple Excel documents from within Sharepoint, it continues to open in the same window. Any ideas/tweaks for this?
I thank you, too, for this information. It’s really helpful. But I’ve run into a similar problem as Jason. The trick doesn’t work if I have an Excel file open and try to open another file from the Office button. It will just open the new file in the same window. Any ideas?
Hi asterismW
Look at step 6. This only applies for opening documents. Don’t choose “open,” choose “new.”
That should solve the issue.
I just wanted to say that I use excel 2007 the same way as Jason and the directions worked for me. I found it was important to make sure the open settings for *both* .XLS and .XLSX were changed together or I would get errors. It made no difference (for me) which order the %e and “%1″ appeared in the command line. So far so good.
Thanks for posting this. It came up as the second item in my search!
Hi from a new guy…
I’ve tried all the fixes I can find here and none of them seem to work for me. I used the process explained at the top of this thread and it’s caused a few problems:
1. I can’t open from windows browser, I get:
“C:\documents\xls” could not be found.
“and.xls” could not be found.
“list.xls” could not be found.
errors.
2. I can open from excel, but lose functionality in the program (eg an autosum won’t calculate ’till I save).
3. I’ve tried all permutations of the “%1″ and get “The specified program could not be found” unless I end the command line with EXCEL.EXE”…
…still getting
“C:\documents\xls” could not be found.
“and.xls” could not be found.
“list.xls” could not be found.
errors.
How can I fix this or how do I return to original state….. please help!!!
it seems I left out the between EXCEL.EXE”…and… /e “%1″. This has fixed the “could not be found” errors, but not the problem with updating, as at point 2
it seems I left out the space between EXCEL.EXE”…and… /e “%1″. This has fixed the “could not be found” errors, but not the problem with updating, as at point 2
I have erred! I tried to use the ‘fix’ at the top of the page, went through all the steps and got the “could not find” messages … over and over. I can access files by going through the Excel program, but not directly off of the desktop, not via My Doc’s, as I have in the past. After trying to make corrections re: “%1″ before or after /e … nothing helps. I tried to undo all that I have done to get back ’square one’. No luck. THEN I realized I don’t have Excel 2007. I am using Excel 2003. I really need to get back to where I was. How do I do that? When I have tried to do that, I am unable to put back what was in the DDE slot that I unchecked … just I don’t remember what was there. I don’t know if that is the problem or not … I will be very grateful for any assistance to get back to where I was. Thanks, Mel
Re: The Nov. 3, 2005 post: I decided to do an XP System Restore … all is well and I am back to where I want to be! Mel
Is there a similar fix for 2007 powerpoint? I have the same problem there as well were I want to open multiple windows. I went to do the same process, but the %1 was already in the “Application used to performance action”.
This worked for excel but what about PowerPoint? I can’t get it to work using the same concept. Any suggestions? Oh, and I am using 2003.
One fix (not the best..) for not being able to open files unless its through excel is:
double click to open the file as normal (Excel should start)
then drag n Drop the file onto the workspace
…this should open the file
Excel 2003…