How to open a new instance of Excel 2007 workbooks

Posted on June 26, 2009 at 5:46 am

If you work with Excel a lot, you’ve probably noticed that each workbook you open doesn’t create a new instance of Excel. There are not several tabs for Excel in your taskbar like for Internet Explorer or other programs.

Why is this and how can it cause problems? For the most part, it’s not a big deal and doesn’t bother most Excel users. However, it is a real pain when working with many spreadsheets and they are treated as a group.

For example, let’s say you decide to calculate everything on one spreadsheet. Well, if you have others open, Excel will recalculate all of them too as if they are somehow related. If this is what you want, great, but if not, there’s no way to stop it!

That is until now! Luckily, there’s a nice registry hack for Excel 2007 that will let you open each workbook in a new instance. This is also really great if you have multiple monitors and want to have multiple Excel workbooks open on different monitors. Right now, all of them show up in one Excel application like below:

However, it’s much easier to work with when you have separate instances for each workbook:

Finally, if one Excel spreadsheet crashes and burns, none of the others will be affected since it’s running in its own instance. You can easily get this functionality using registry editing files already created that will add a context menu to your right-click menu.

You can download this ZIP file that includes five different files: one to add the option and make it default, one to just add the option, one to just make it default, one to remove the option, and one to remove making it default. Note that these files only work for Excel 2007 running on a 32-bit Windows platform.

All of the files are TXT files and in order to use them, you have to just rename them to .reg files. After that, just double-click on the one you want to use and click OK when the prompt appears.

Also, you can run the files in any order you like, so you can add the option to the context menu, then make it default, etc.

The other thing to note is that you might have some issue with copy and paste because advanced formatting can only be done between workbooks in the same instance. So if you need to copy and paste something between two workbooks that has advanced formatting, open them in the same instance using the normal Open command.

If you have any problems, etc, post a comment here and I will try to help! Enjoy your new freedom! [via ExpertsExchange]

» Filed Under MS Office Tips

Comments

20 Responses to “How to open a new instance of Excel 2007 workbooks”

Rich said on : June 26th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

GREAT, is there a way to do the same thing for Powerpoint?

Brad said on : June 26th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

How hard would this be to do for PowerPoint?

Jay said on : June 26th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

Surely there’s a way to get this working in 64-bit versions of Windows?

After seeing this on Lifehacker, I tried using the “Make Open In New Excel Instance Default” on Win7 64-bit and now I can’t double click on Excel files to open them. I have to right click and choose open. And even when I do that, they’re not showing up in separate instances.

Fortunately the undo file worked fine and everything’s back to normal.

Aaron said on : June 26th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Didn’t work for me. I ran the .reg file to make it the default and now when I try to open a .xls or .xlsx file Windows says that open the file because it doesn’t know what program created it. So I had to re-associate all Excel files to open with Excel in folder properties and they open now but all in the same instance. I re-ran the .reg file to make it the default again and didn’t have the file association problem but they still run in the same instance. I am running Excel 2007 SP2.

Robert said on : June 26th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

For Windows 7 x64 you have to edit the files and change Program Files to Program Files (x86).

Dave said on : June 26th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

To get this to work in 64-bit Vista, just open the .txt file and replace “Program Files” with “Program Files (x86)”. Works just fine for me after that.

Brad said on : June 30th, 2009 at 10:26 am

Is there something that will work for Visio?

Geoff said on : July 1st, 2009 at 10:38 am

Is there anything similar for Excel 2003?

Naters said on : July 7th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

Isn’t working on XP SP3 with Office 2007 SP2.

Rodney Bradey said on : July 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am

Doesn’t work with latest 2007 fixes with Vista, opens the xls in an existing instance.

Andrew said on : August 3rd, 2009 at 8:52 am

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

I can now finally use Excel on different desktops with VirtuaWin.

Dune said on : September 30th, 2009 at 2:37 am

Just want to thank you for this nice trips. I was searching a solution from many months.

Office 2007 is really deplorable. Nothing usefull. just a lot of trouble.

Clint said on : October 19th, 2009 at 11:02 am

Beautiful. Exactly what we needed (Excel2007 on WinXP) Thanks!

Clint said on : October 27th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

There is an issue with the fix in the zip file. It makes “Open” the default action for templates, but the default should really be “New”. That creates a new document from the template (which is what a template is for), rather than editing the template itself.

To fix this, save the following lines in a text file with a reg extension and run it:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template\shell]
@=”New_in_New_Excel_Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance]
@=”New in New Excel Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /n \”%1\”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template.8\shell]
@=”New_in_New_Excel_Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template.8\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance]
@=”New in New Excel Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Template.8\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /n \”%1\”"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.TemplateMacroEnabled\shell]
@=”New_in_New_Excel_Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.TemplateMacroEnabled\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance]
@=”New in New Excel Instance”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.TemplateMacroEnabled\shell\New_in_New_Excel_Instance\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /n \”%1\”"

brian said on : November 18th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

Thanks a lot. If you’re a Vista or Window 7 user, this is the ultimate fix. Now, my Excel thumbnails are appearing properly in the taskbar. This is a huge help for those of us that work with multiple Excel docs simultaneously in Vista and Windows 7. Thanks, again.

James C said on : November 30th, 2009 at 11:40 am

Does not work for XP 2002 SP3 platform with Excel 2007 SP1. Would be really nice if it did because running a virtual desktop environment with all Excel apps opening in the same instance is a major pain.

Scott said on : December 31st, 2009 at 11:42 am

Works great from me in Windows 7 with Office 2007 SP2! Thank you VERY much!

Nara said on : January 14th, 2010 at 5:39 pm

I consider myself a power user of Excel and have been frustrated with the need to manually open files in different instances in Excel which I often tend to forget in the midst of work. Your Registry updates works like a charm.

Brilliant … Thanks heaps!!!

Victor3 said on : February 1st, 2010 at 8:18 pm

This is THE solution I’ve been looking for with Windows 7 and Excel 2007.

Could you do it again for Powerpoint 2007 ?