Force Windows 7 to open excel documents in separate windows
Force Windows 7 to open excel documents in separate windows
Posted on Feb 11, 2010 by Paul WhiteI love windows 7, but I hate the way they open documents under a singlewindow. I googled for a long time to find a fix for this. Finally Ifound the solution. If you want to force Windows 7 to open yourApplications especially Excel, Word, Internet Explorer, Firefox in anew window, then I have the solution. But first lets try to understand why Windows 7 does this.
What does Windows 7 open documents under the same window?
They do this because by keeping your documents open under the same window, they are able to only open 1 process to run the application. When you open a separate windows this is supposed to greatly increase memory usage. But the chances are if you are running Windows 7 you have a ton of memory at your disposible. I personally have 6 GB and while I write this with multiple applications open I am only using 2.5 GB.How do I force Windows 7 to open documents under separate windows?
You will need to make some new registry entries. Before you do this, I highly recommend you backup your registry. Changing the wrong thing in your registry can cause major issues with your computer. However if you follow these instructions you should be fine. Just to clarify if you wreck your system I take no responsibility.You need to open your Registry Editor
Click on the Start ( windows circle button ) button
Directly above the circle button you will see a text box that says
"Search Programs and Files"
Inside this you need to type "regedit" without the double quotes, and press "ENTER"
Next you need to navigate to the following registry entry
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTExcel.Sheet.8shellOpencommand
The (default) value will be something like this:
"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE" /e
And you'll want to append a "%1" to the end of that, making it:
"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"
Next you'll want to rename the command key, which is right below the (Default) key, to command2 or something else.
Next you'll need to rename the ddeexec key here to ddeexec2 or something else:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTExcel.Sheet.8shellOpenddeexec
This will make the change for the Excel 97-2003 filetype.
If youwant to do the same thing for Excel 2007 files, you'll need to make thechanges to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTExcel.Sheet.12 key.
After you have done this your Registry should like similar to thi
Hopefully this helps everyone out.
Thanks a lot worked fine! Will this also work for Powerpoint 2007 in Windows 7? Or is that a one-instance software only?
Thanks in advance!
Thank you. This definitely works. This is the only way I found to open two Excel files in separate windows under Windows 7.
In the value of (default), /e can be deteled. This is similar to the operation in Windows XP. The value reads:
"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE" "%1"