How to Force Excel to Open in a New Instance by Default 2010
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So I have an Excel 2010 (on Windows 7) user with dual monitors. She has various Excel spreadsheets on her desktop (to keep things simple for this example, we'll just keep it down to two and go with Excel File 1 and Excel File 2). Until today, she could simply open the files one at a time by double clicking them on the desktop. They would each open in separate Excel instances/windows. She could drag Excel File 1 to monitor 1 and Excel File 2 to monitor 2 and have them side by side, which is exactly what she wanted to do.
She can no longer do that as of some point this afternoon. Now when she opens multiple Excel files that way (regardless of how many), they all open in what appears to be the same instance/window of Excel (only one excel.exe instance in task manager), and she can only see them confined to the same window (meaning she can't have Excel File 1 on this monitor and Excel File 2 on that monitor). If that makes sense. So the two different Excel files are inside one window. She can drag that one window around, but all her spreadsheets are "stuck" in that window. So basically, she can't split them between her two monitors anymore.
I can do a side-by-side view of the two files or resize them and stack them on top of each other within that window, but she doesn't like that option because she can't really take advantage of her dual monitors that way (not to mention the two files are a lot smaller if she looks at them in that view).
I have found that it's possible for her to just open the Excel File 1 by double clicking it as she has been, then opening Excel.exe from her start menu or whatever (to just open Excel itself without opening a file), then going to File->Open, navigating to her desktop, and selecting Excel File 2. Which works and has the two files in different windows, but she doesn't see that as an acceptable workaround and gives me the "But I never had to do that before!" line (and I guess I have to admit that she has a point there).
I've tried going into Excel Options -> Advanced and checking the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" option (as some suggested as a fix when I started searching). When I do that, she can't even open the spreadsheets at all and gets "There was a problem sending the command to the program" upon trying.
Is there anything else I can do with this? Everything I've read on this issue says Excel 2010 doesn't support running multiple instances like that, and that we shouldn't have been able to do it in the first place, and that upgrading to 2013 or higher would fix it. But....she has been doing it, for years, in Excel 2010, until that behavior suddenly changed at some point this afternoon.
I can try to explain more clearly what exactly we're trying to do here if needed, but I hope that all makes sense.
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9 Replies
If that doesn't work, I think there is a user preference in there somewhere that got accidentally turned on (or off).
It's been a while since I've used office 2010 so I'll have to dig to see if I can find that option.
Also, are all of the Microsoft office service packs applied for office 2010?
Until you figure it out, you can type "excel" in the run prompt and it will open a new instance. Then, use ctrl-o to open the file.
The separate instances stopped working for me years ago and I haven't figured it out yet.
I don't know how it was working for her until just recently, since that has never been a behavior of Excel 2010 for as long as I can remember. The problem is because Excel uses DDE functions differently than Word, which did have the ability through a poorly documented registry hack.
This is a well documented complaint going back to 2010 that Excel will not open a new window when double clicking on a file directly - and that is the intended function.
I really disagree with you guys on this....
Only recently Excel have changed....I could clearly remember only very recently I was able to open a few Excel files on my lappy and it opened using different sessions and not different tabs since a long time ago....I just tried on my Win10 just now and its diff instances
Maybe try something like Windows taskbar not combining icons (not combine even when taskbar is full) ? Or like click one excel then shift click another file (this seems to be a bug as it forces the settings for some cases).
Yeah, the interesting thing is that throughout most of the Google searching I've done on this, I've seen "that's not supposed to work in Excel 2010" as the general answer. But this user was definitely able to run multiple instances of Excel 2010 and has been doing so for years. That was actually one reason she added the second monitor a couple of years ago. But yeah, for that reason, she's not accepting the "it's not supposed to work in 2010 at all" explanation.
She also pointed out that there's a different workstation in her office that's running Office 2010 on Windows 7 (same PC manufacturer/model and everything), and Excel on that one still behaves the way she wants it to behave on her workstation (ie, double-clicking those .xlsx files one at a time will open each one in a different window/instance). So whatever happened to her yesterday, apparently didn't happen to this one. I'm planning to look at that other workstation to compare settings and see if I can spot any differences.
I'll double check on Windows/office updates and report back here after I get a chance to go for round 2 (later today), but I'm pretty sure her workstation is current on all non-optional updates. But that is a thought, I guess especially since yesterday was Tuesday.
This has been going on for years, since Office 2007. You can read all about it clear back to 2012. The simple solution? Upgrade to Office 2013 or better.
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Our business office was able to have multiple instances of Excel open without issue in Windows 7... then we updated to Windows 10. Then we needed a work around. The easiest thing for our people was to pin Excel to the task bar and have it open a 2nd instance by right clicking on it. My answer to the "I've never had to do that before" is usually, "well, there was an update and it changed that feature, so now you have to do it this new way. Sorry."
Could you create and run a scriptsuch as this? (manipulate as needed)
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.OpenDocumentSpreadsheet.12\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.SheetBinaryMacroEnabled.12\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.SheetMacroEnabled.12\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template.8\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.TemplateMacroEnabled\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Workspace\shell]
@="Open_in_New_Excel_Instance"
@="Open in New Excel Instance"
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
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How to Force Excel to Open in a New Instance by Default 2010
Source: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2241097-excel-2010-open-spreadsheets-in-separate-instances-windows