Basic Excel Help (Multiple Windows?)

Nitefly · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:22

Hi - I’m struggling with what I assume must be simple excel issues and it’s making me lose the will to live, so any help is greatly appreciated.

Can You really not have multiple windows of excel? You can do this in word, obviously, but I find it strange you can’t do this in excel. I know you can view spreadsheets ‘side by side’ within a single window but I like wording in multiple windows as I have so many emails / word documents / pdfs etc open at once and frequently overlay them - it is far more flexible. There must be an easy solution to this... Shirley?! Google says no so my googling must be poor...

Thanks in advance

bremen1874 · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:30

Works for me. Four separate instances opened without any special tricks.

Vince · 9 Jul 2018 at 16:32

Only allows multiple instances in 2013 onwards... there is a hack for 2010, create a desktop shortcut and point it at excel. In shortcut properties remove all info in "start in" box and fire up all extra instances from the shortcut.

Nitefly · 9 Jul 2018 at 19:58

Thanks guys - I think it just may be the version of excel we run at work

Antar Bolaeisk · 10 Jul 2018 at 03:25

For Excel <= 2010 when opening Excel hold down the Alt button and it'll open up as a separate instance. It's still not a great solution though as trying to manage opening the correct file in the correction session is a pain and copying between the session is limited to plain data. Also, multiple views into the same workbook are still limited to the single window of the session it's currently open in.

I agree though, once you've experienced the wonders of multiple windows in Excel 2013+ it's hard to go back.

On the plus side, end of support for Office 2010 is October 2020 so you'll at most have to live with it for two more years by which point your IT guys should really be upgrading you.

Nitefly · 10 Jul 2018 at 15:04

Antar Bolaeisk said:
For Excel <= 2010 when opening Excel hold down the Alt button and it'll open up as a separate instance. It's still not a great solution though as trying to manage opening the correct file in the correction session is a pain and copying between the session is limited to plain data. Also, multiple views into the same workbook are still limited to the single window of the session it's currently open in.

I agree though, once you've experienced the wonders of multiple windows in Excel 2013+ it's hard to go back.

On the plus side, end of support for Office 2010 is October 2020 so you'll at most have to live with it for two more years by which point your IT guys should really be upgrading you.

You are a god! Thank you!!