Number two — Excel shortcut

• Open the folder where your Office is installed. The default path for Excel 2010 is C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 14. If you have Excel 2007, the name of the last folder is Office 12.
• Find the Excel.exe application and right-click on it
• Choose the option to Create shortcut and send it to your desktop.

Whenever you need to open a new instance of Excel — double-click this desktop shortcut.

Number three — Excel option in the Send To menu

If you often have to open two Excel windows simultaneously, see this advanced shortcut solution suggested on the forum. It is actually easier than it may seem, just try it:

• Follow the steps above for creating Excel shortcut;
• Open this folder on your computer: C:/Users/UserName/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo

Now you can avoid opening your second file from within Excel. You can right-click the file you want in a new instance, and choose to Send To -> Excel.

Other suggestions that may work for you

There are two other solutions that work for many people. One of them is selecting the «Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)» option in Advanced Excel Options. The other one involves registry changes.

Looking at spreadsheets in two different windows makes many Excel tasks easier. Trying to view the files side by side eats a lot of space and it isn’t always the best option. The advantages of two files comprise something more than just the ability to compare or view sheets next to each other. If you corrupt the data in one file, you won’t have to re-open all other documents from separate instances.

You may also be interested in

• Workbook Manager for Excel — try this tool to quickly switch between data sheets, move them around, and carry out all similar daily tasks in a click.

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50 responses to «How to open Excel files in separate windows»

There is a much simpler method:
All you have to do is to create a shortcut on your desktop that points the Excel executable file and then edit the target box in the shortcut property to read:

«C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE» «C:\Folder name\Subfolder name\Name of Excel file.xlsx»

Remember to type the quote marks (all 4), and replace the path and file name in the example above with the correct path and filename of your choice.

Thanks for that, it helped me 🙂

That worked. Thank you for sharing with the community!

Top Tip! Thanks for this. If you can work out how to get the Classic View back so I can get rid of this useless Ribbon it would be fantastic too.

Hi Gareth,
Thank you! You can check out this paid add-in that brings the classic menu back: http://www.addintools.com/office2010/menutoolbar/

Ubit Classic Menu works like a charm..

OMG!! Thank you. That has been driving me crazy for a week and all the other solutions I found were way to complicated. This was perfect and easy.

Thank you so much for the tips.

There’s a minimize button under the main minimize button. It sounds absurd, but look under the main minimize button, you’ll see another button.
Click on that, and your excel files will separate.

Sure, they separate, but are still stuck within the confines of that workbook.

Simple Things are always hard to put together. Great Post !

Thanks.
Cannot believe smart people in Microsoft came up such stupid idea

While this is a good solution for many, my issue revolves around opening excel files from email without saving them to my computer first.

Suggestions for this issue?

Thanks for this! Simple but effective

The «Send To» solution is by far the best and easiest for opening existing Excel Workbooks. Thanks.

Thank you for the «send to» that was A+ perfect.
I have been trying to google this the right way to figure this out.
I don’t want to mess with the registry to solve this as in numerous
posts. Plus the uncheck dde didn’t work for me either.
Thanks again!

Thanks a million!

The second option I have used and it worked. Very good.. Thanks.

Any suggestions for being able to do this for an excel email attachment in Outlook?

Thank you so much!

This worked, however, now I can’t cut and paste between the 2 workbooks! Or move sheets between them. They don’t talk. Am I missing something? This will not be a good solution for me on all occasions.

Thanks so much for the easy description. I used the first method and was able to open a separate file right away! This is great!

Thank you! This is the only article I could find that answered my question!

Thank you very much for your feedback, Jessica, happy to hear it helps!

Ok, system info is as follows: win 7, office 2010, registry is NOT hacked with the %1, the Ignore DDE option box in excel is NOT checked. I have 2 computers exactly same as above yet 1 opens all excel files in seperate instances and the other opens them all in the same instance. There must be another option somewhere that tells excel to open all spreadsheets in a different window wthout hacking the registry or ignoring DDE. I cannot find this option anywher. Who knows the answer? Thanks

I’m sorry, we don’t know what may be causing these differences. I can only suggest trying one of the described ways to open files the way you need, or patching the registry.

Excellent. It worked for me very well..

OMG. Its working. Thank you so much.

Fantastic! This just made my week. Thanks!

Thanks. 1st one easy one and worked.

Please try this just in case.

All you need to do is instead of double clicking on the excel document to open.
open excel by going to start – Microsoft excel – file open — open first document
Do the same thing open the second document and it will be separate.

Lauren, that is a brilliant answer; and it means I can have one on each monitor. Thank you.

While this is a solution, it doesn’t completely solve my problem. I work with a lot of excel files, from different locations. Opening, closing, comparing. It’s not a problem to open a new Excel window, just use the start, but than finding the file to open from the browse each time really gets on my nerves. Going from internal folders, to external hard-drives or network folders.

Basically I need a way to open a file directly in a new window.

Very helpful! Thank you!

Opening one Excel file and then right clicking the Excel taskbar icon and clicking «Microsoft Excel» works. Thank you! Such a simple solution but it’s not obvious since Excel files don’t open the way Word files do.

I agree with Vlad on this. I have hundreds of excel files, scattered among many folders. I ALWAYS want them to open in separate windows and I don’t want to hunt around directories to find them Every Time. Is there no simple command to «always open in new window». I’ve been able to do this for 25 years, before Windows 10 came along. Is Microsoft THAT incredibly stupid??

It would appear so. Like McDonald’s forgot that they are «fast food» Microsoft has forgotten the program is called «Windows» for a reason. It’s sad they took such a wonderful way the program worked and broke it. But hey that’s innovation!! Of course innovation would be fine if someone actually used their brain and checked to see if it really was better or better yet simply left a check box behind so those who wanted to use something and those who didn’t could both do what they wanted to do.

I don’t understand this. I’ve been using Office 2007 since it became available. I have the home and student version which allows five installations. over the years, I’ve installed this DOZENS of times. from reinstalling Windows, replacing computers, a computer for my father, etc. Dozens of times is not an exaggeration.

Before this month, EVERY TIME I installed Office H&S 2007, all of my Excel documents were shown in separate windows just like my Word 2007 documents. I didn’t know people were putting up with this headache. I had never changed any settings for this at all. But now, I reinstalled my Windows 10 laptop and all the documents are sharing a window. It is a major headache. I can’t get any of these suggestions to work.

Note: every previous time, my documents appeared in their own window no matter how I opened them. For me, that was double clicking on the file for many things but for a couple of others that I used weekly or daily, I had shortcuts. They opened separately. But now, they aren’t.

Thanks a lot for the workaround.

I could fix the issue with the first one.
Solution number one — Excel icon on the taskbar
Open your first table, then use one of the following four ways to open a new instance:

Right-click Excel icon on the taskbar and pick «Microsoft Excel 2010» (or 2007):
Open a new window with Excel using the taskbar icon

Then navigate to File -> Open and browse for your second table.

Press and hold the Shift key on your keyboard, hold the shit untill the file is open.

As for my work around. I’ll just open a blank excel document and open the file I want to and then directly double click the 2nd excel file. They will be on two diff excel windows now. 🙂

It would be easier if it just worked simply and open the way almost every other windows program does. Everything from Microsoft these days tried to be intelligent and «help» you work and then actually does the opposite of what I want. Ideas posted here all work but they are more difficult and complex than how things easily worked years ago.

the new window application devlopment in point application file as creative window class
there are application on different in file page in window to window devlopment on very large file in page devlopment