Office 2007, Windows Server 2008 x64.
How can I make Excel so that when I double-click a document, it opens in a new Excel instance, so that I can easily view them side-by-side as separate windows and not using the View-Arrange All functionality? Now I have to go to the task bar, click on one document to see it and then click on the other document in the task bar to switch to that one. As the alternative, I close one document, open a new Excel window, then drag the document in there.
Thank you.
Best Answer
There is a very nice walk-through of modifying the registry here. It will be slightly different under Server 2008 but similar enough to hopefully make sense:
regedit.exe
. Right click on theregedit.exe
file then click on "Run as administrator" option.HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xls
key. You can do this by expanding theHKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
node, then start typing.xls
, or just search for.xls
, or just scroll down and hunt for it. You should see something like this:Look at the
(Default)
value, in the screenshot above, that isExcel.Sheet.8
. Now, go to that key inHKEY_CLASSESS_ROOT
. In other words, go toHKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8
.Excel.Sheet.8
key and you’ll see that it has several keys under it. One of those keys is namedshell
. Go ahead and expand theshell
key too. you’ll see something like this:Notice that the keys under shell correspond to the options you see when you right click on an excel file in Explorer. The idea is that we want to add an “open in new instance” option here. So, right click on the
shell
key, then choose New->Key.Give the key any name you like. For example,
OpenInNewInstance
. When the key is created, double click on(Default)
to give it a default value. The default value will be the option that you will see on the right click menu. So, for this example, we’ll useOpen In New Instance
. You should have something like this:OpenInNewInstance
. This time, name it ascommand
. To set the default value of thecommand
key, you will need the path to the EXCEL.EXE file. In Windows 7 64-bit and Office 2010 set the value to this:C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE" "%1
If you have the same setup as mine, you can just copy the above. Otherwise, make necessary adjustments to match your setup. You should now see something like this.
.xls
file. You should now see your “Open in New Instance” option.Click on “Open In New Instance” and Excel opens the workbook in a new application window. Right click on another
.xls
file and open it in a new instance, Excel opens it in yet another application window..xls
file in Explorer, you want Excel to open it in a new application instance, then, there’s one simple step to do. Go to theshell
key and set it’s default value toOpenInNewInstance
The instructions above allows you to add an option to the right click menu of
*.xls
files. Excel 2007/2010 files have a different extension (.xlsx
or.xlsm
). Just follow the same steps, but look for the correct extension (xlsx
orxlsm
instead ofxls
) in #2.http://web.archive.org/web/20141014173336/http://www.excelqa.info/2011/06/17/how-to-open-excel-files-in-a-new-application-instance-windows-7-or-vista/