Excel 2007 has stopped giving me separate instances of new files/opened files

Hi everyone,

Up until a few days ago, every time I opened an excel file I would get a separate instance of the file on the taskbar, and I could happily alt-tab between the files and copy/paste data with ease (no huge list of copy options - just a straight paste or paste special).

But now for some reason excel does not open separate instances - I have to use the "switch windows" option under the view tab, which is a real pain.

What has happened? How can I get my excel back to how it was?

I have tried a few registry edits but the result was not what I had hoped for. I just want a separate instance for every newly opened workbook and to be able to easily copy and paste between them.

All help very much appreciated!

rocdoc

Hi rocdoc and welcome to ExcelForum,

Rick Rothstein's first reply in the following thread may answer your question: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/o...9139cd5?auth=1

Lewis

Originally Posted by LJMetzger

Hi rocdoc and welcome to ExcelForum,

Rick Rothstein's first reply in the following thread may answer your question: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/o...9139cd5?auth=1

Lewis

Thanks Lewis, I gave it a shot, but no help.

After more fiddling, I believe I want to force excel to open a new instance of excel every time a new file is double clicked or opened. I just need to know how. The advanced display option doesn't work, nor does the taskbar solution. Hopefully someone will have a solution. More assistance please.

Here are a couple of more things you can try:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...xp?forum=excel

Originally Posted by LJMetzger

Here are a couple of more things you can try:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...xp?forum=excel

I had found this, but no joy. The closest I found sort of worked - if I find it again I'll post it. Until then, I hope others will still have some ideas.

An odd rule that seems to favor the board rather than the user, but of course I will remember for the future.

OK well I have found the solution.

The problem was the lack of separate instances of excel that would allow me to alt-tab between open workbooks. This was a problem because switching between them with the view menu was very irritating.

Anyway I found a shortcut to swap between them within one instance of excel - ctrl tab. This suddenly made things a lot easier. But then in using this shortcut, the other work book "popped out" of single instance of excel, and now I have two instances of excel that I can alt-tab between. This is very odd but who cares, I can now flip easily between my work and that's all that matters.

I will provide this answer to the other forum I asked this question on to be fair, but now I am aware of cross posting rules I won't do that again.

I haven't seen this published anywhere else, so I hope it's helpful.