Excel is being mean to me.

April 10, 2015 11:04 AM

I need to have two Microsoft Excel documents open side by side, on my monitor, at the same time. However each time I open a second document, the first one disappears and turns into the second, so only one of the two documents shows on my screen.

What should I do to keep the first document open, with a second showing right next to it?

I am running Excel 2007. Help!

posted by elf27 to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: View - Arrange All - Vertical. Does that not work?
posted by something something at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2015

Response by poster: oh, by the way, Windows 7 OS
posted by elf27 at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2015

Basically you need to go to the Start menu and open another instance of Excel. As opposed to opening an excel document.
posted by Busmick at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

Response by poster: something something.. that works... thank you!
posted by elf27 at 11:07 AM on April 10, 2015

I do what Busmick does.
posted by SillyShepherd at 12:35 PM on April 10, 2015

Or you can use your middle mouse button to click on the Excel title on the taskbar. That'll open a new Excel window. You can arrange one to the left half of the screen by pressing Windows Key + Left Arrow and the other to the right by, well, you can probably guess.
posted by ambrosen at 1:29 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

At long last, Microsoft finally fixed this with Excel 2013. Files open in their own windows by default (you know, like all other Office documents do).

This doesn't help you in Excel 2007 (you have to open your own new instance, as mentioned above), but might give you hope for the future.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:37 AM on April 11, 2015