Excel 2010 Opens in Two Windows

**berkley** · 04-20-2011, 08:49 PM

Greetings,
I have recently noticed some odd behavior when opening excel 2010 workbooks. When I click on a file to open (let's say file name is Test), the first thing that happens is only the application opens in a window (title bar of window says "Microsoft Excel") then after a few seconds the application plus file will open in a second window (title bar says "Test - Microsoft Excel"). This is even more annoying on password protected files, as Excel prompts me for a password for the file and a password for a copy of the file. I have renamed, deleted and created new files, but still get the same behaviour. What could be causing this? Have experienced no other issues with office 2010 apps and have not made any system changes in several months.

Thanks for your assistance.

**MarvinP** · 04-20-2011, 09:58 PM

Hi berkley,

Find Excel.exe on your hard drive and cliclk (or double click) on it to open excel. See if the same behavior happens. I'm wondering if you have your .lnk to excel firing it twice. Did this start to happen after April 1st?

Then look at the View tab and go throught he options there to see if something like "open in a separate" file is checked somewhere.

Then right click on the Excel Icon in the start window and look at properties. I think it is happening before Excel starts. Something from the OS. BTW - Windows XP? Vista? Windows 7?

**berkley** · 04-21-2011, 06:31 PM

I launched Excel.exe from my hard drive and it opens normally. Yes, this did start to happen right around April 1. Looked at View tab and properties; nothing there to indicate open in separate window. OS in Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

**MarvinP** · 04-21-2011, 07:16 PM

I'm wondering if someone set a shortcut link to a batch or shell file that opens Excel twice. Another possibility is some keyboards have function key programming to do stuff that is hard to analyse.