Dual monitors!

**squiggler47** · 10-27-2010, 06:20 AM

I was reading a post about split screens, and thinking its a pity that Excel(and indeed office) doesnt have more support!

As a photoshop user its often nice to drag the toolbars onto the second monitor freeing up screen space for a bigger view of the work Item!

wouldnt it be nice if you could drag the ribbon, and indeed some of the tabs onto the second monitor!

I dont know about other people, but I tend to jump between Home and Formula tabs on a regular basis! To have them constantly open on monitor 2 would save a lot of time!

Same with sheets it would be nice to drag them to seperate monitors, I do one day dream of having a 3 monitor system which fits me, 1 rotatable portrait/landscape and 2 landscape that way I can have my books on one screen and the other 2 for development!

**teylyn** · 10-27-2010, 06:29 AM

Manually size your Excel window across two screens.

Create a custom ribbon with all your favourite commands from the Home and formulas tab. (in 2010)

Arrange your open files to spread out on your two monitors.

It's all there for the taking.

(funny, I hardly ever use the formulas tab. I have "Evaluate Formula" in the QAT, and everything else in the Formulas tab I either don't need or do by keyboard shortcut.)

**squiggler47** · 10-27-2010, 06:53 AM

I know I do all that, I had a custom tab from the beta versions!, but you can only have one available at once! And by extending excel I have half on one screen and half on the other, with adobe windows expand to the monitor you put it on!

I just think as most programmers use 2 monitors (or more) and Windows 7 made a big deal about improved multi-monitor support, that Microsoft might look at making its applications work better with dual monitors!

Still I do have one great tip, http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/, although I try not to its often tempting to put things on the desktop with this little freeware program, I always have a clear desktop, and with a double click all my shortcuts come back, nicely grouped on screen for fast access!

**teylyn** · 10-27-2010, 06:59 AM

I'm not too worried about icons on my desktop. I hardly use them at all. In this age of wide screen monitors, I've taken to having the taskbar at the side of the monitor, where I can see two dozen open applications and just click on the one I want. I typically have

IE
firefox
firefox download window
Windows Explorer
a couple of Word docs
up to a dozen Excel files
Fireworks
Outlook

all in the taskbar at the right hand side of my screen, and each window is just one click away.

**squiggler47** · 10-27-2010, 07:05 AM

I tried it at the side of the screen I could never get used to it, although it makes sense on a widescreen monitor! I do like the pinned feature of windows 7, Excel and Chrome have pride of place along with photoshop, and google earth and visual studio, and a shortcut to my library, since I put them there I think I use the start menu 50% less often! The rest of office is pinned to my start menu!

I have my Excel book pdf's 2 clicks away, which works with dual monitors(althoug I wish I had my rotatable monitor)

**zbor** · 10-27-2010, 08:13 AM

It's really nice to work that way.. And you'll get use to it soon...

Here I've oppened 8 programs... I think I've never used more than 15... And here can be placed over 20...

And also, it squesse my desktop over widht...

IF I have same size of taskbar over height.. now that would be a problem...

**teylyn** · 10-29-2010, 04:51 AM

zb, that looks very much like my screen, except I have the task bar at the right hand side of my dual screen setup.

Over the course of the day, the thing gets more crowded, and when it goes into two-column mode, I know I have to close some of the forum workbooks ....

**romperstomper** · 10-29-2010, 11:00 AM

My taskbar is at the bottom and autohides (my workbooks tend to be wider than they are tall for anything important). If you stretch Excel over multiple monitors, you can fit an awful lot on one tab!