How to Open Excel Files in a New Application Instance

April 12th, 2007

By default, when you try to open an Excel file by double-clicking it in Windows Explorer, it will open in an already existing instance of Excel. But sometimes, you want it to open in a new instance and even make it the default behavior.

The following steps will allow you to do that.

STEP 1. In Windows Explorer, select Tools->Folder Options. In the Folder Options Dialog, go to the File Types tab and look for the XLS file type. Then, click on the Advanced button.

STEP 2. In the Edit File Type Dialog that opens up, click on the New… button.

STEP 3. Give the new action a name like “Open in New App Instance” or even “My Own Open”. Click on Browse and look for the Excel Executable. If you used the default installation paths, just paste this (make sure you include the double quotes):

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE” “%1″

New Action

STEP 4. Click on OK to close the New Action Dialog. Click OK to close the Edit File Type Dialog. And finally click on Close to close the Folder Options Dialog.

Now, when you right click on an Excel file, you will see something like this:
Open in New Instance

You will see that your new action is now available in the right click menu for Excel files. When you double-click the Excel file, it opens in the default behavior (i.e., in an existing instance of Excel). But if you right click and the click on your new action, it opens in a new Excel instance.

If you want your action to be the default action on double click, just go back to the Edit File Type dialog (Step 2 above). Select your action. Then click on the Set Default button. Your action will turn to bold and it is now the default action. Double clicking an Excel file opens in a new Excel application instance.

Posted in Excel, How To | 25 Comments

25 Comments »

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Brilliant! Just what I needed.

Comment by Allen Nugent — April 12, 2007 #
This works great for excel but not for visio. Any ideas? What does the %1 parameter do I tried removing it but it always puts it back by default.

Comment by Jason — March 25, 2008 #
Hi Jason, don’t ask me why, but this seems to work. When you specify the action command for visio, specify it like this:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Visio11\VISIO.EXE” /nonew “%1″

Adding the /nonew command parameter seems to do the trick. %1 represents the filename as a parameter.

Look here for a list of command line switches for Visio..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314392

Comment by Vergel — March 26, 2008 #
Excellent fix. Spreadsheets always launch in a new version of Excel now. Many thanks!

Comment by Selwyn Froggett — June 6, 2008 #
Hi, I actually want the opposite behavior. I want all my workbooks to open in one instance. However each time I open a workbook, a new Excel opens. I’m using Office 2003, here are my setting under OPEN: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″

Comment by Mike — July 11, 2008 #
Mike,

Set your OPEN action to: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE” /e %1

Then, check the “Use DDE” checkbox. Under DDE MEssage, enter: [open("%1")]

Comment by Vergel — July 11, 2008 #
This has been annoying me for months. Finally decided to check for a solution. Some of the offers out there are unimaginably complex – this worked perfectly, thanks so much!

Comment by Evan — July 16, 2008 #
Thanks for the comment Evan. Glad you found this post helpful.

Comment by Vergel — July 16, 2008 #
Exactly what I needed. Excel used to open a new instance when I clicked on an Excel file bu default, but they recently changed our network paths and, for some reason, it started with single instance for all files behavior. (My main — very simple — use for Excel requires that I compare spreadsheets side by side.)

At first I built the new right click action option (however you say it) as instructed here, but Mike mentioning that adding the “/e” setting (when wanting to do the opposite I wanted to do) allowed me to realize I could remove it from the normal Open action. Now I just double click on the files I need — which is exactly what I want to do.

Thank you very much.

Comment by RonB — September 3, 2008 #
Awesome, well documented information. Thank you so much.

Comment by AymanE — September 19, 2008 #
Great, this has been driving me crazy for weeks! Thank you for this hack!

Comment by Daniel — March 18, 2009 #
Hi everybody,
Anybody knows how to do that in Vista? I dont’t seem to have that File Types tab in the Folder Option. Thanks in advance.

Comment by Luc — May 20, 2009 #
Hey, this is cool. I was actually looking for the solution to a different Excel problem (which I found on a different web page), but this is something I’ve been doing manually on occasion, and now I can automate it to a right click.

Thanks!

–
Furry cows moo and decompress.

Comment by Wyrd — June 8, 2009 #
Vista and Office 2007

There seems to be a problem with the option avalible in Excel Options->Advance-> “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)”.

When checked the key ‘ddeexec’ @ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ should be ignored, this does not seem to happen and when the option in excel is ticked I was getting file location errors.

Hack workaround:
Delete the key ‘ddeexec’ and its sub keys in the action you want to change. (for me it was simply when using ‘open’)

You also need to add the “%1″ to the (default) string located @ HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command because now the burden of loading the file is on the command line call rather then DDE inside excel.

If you want .xlsx do work the same just replace the path Excel.Sheet.8 with Excel.Sheet.12

Excel.Sheet.8 (associated with .xls)

Excel.Sheet.12 (associated with .xls)

Anyhows thats what worked for me.

Comment by Playdoh — July 1, 2009 #
Great and so simple.
I was trying to fix this problem for few days.
Thanks man!

Comment by Kud — August 7, 2009 #
[...] post about how to open excel files in a new application instance. This is the easiest and most complete way I have seen to set things up so that you can have to [...]

Pingback by Office MacGyver » Blog Archive » How to Put Microsoft Excel Workbooks on Two Different Monitors — August 7, 2009 #
Great info, much appreciated!

Comment by Swedish Chef — October 1, 2009 #
What a wonderful tip!!

Seriously, thanks a lot – been needing something like this for ages!

Thanks again

Comment by Tom — October 7, 2009 #
For Windows 7 you will miss the “File Types”. You can use Nirsofts FileTypesMan program to do this.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/file_types_manager.html

For my config I had to replace /e with %1 and not “%1″ as in some examples above.

Comment by Rene Bonte — November 20, 2009 #
Thank you very, very much for this! One suggestion: My root problem was that the Undo function of Excel 2007 operates across ALL files when multiple files are loaded at once. I eventually deduced that it was because Excel 2007 shares one memory instance by default. However, if there is some way to get this page to be indexed by a Google search for “excel 2007 undo affects multiple documents” that would be great. I only stumbled on this page after trying multiple dead ends.

Comment by Alan — November 25, 2009 #
Excellent thread.
I have users, some running Office 2003 on virtual machines via a thin client, others with separate laptops, all working to the same common areas of the server.
I have a Excel app I want to run in its own instance of Excel. Can I set up a shortcut on their desktop that will open my Excel app (fairly complex with oodles of code, custom toolbars and menus etc.) in a separate instance of Excel. If Excel not open, then this will be first instance. What would be ideal is that if the users then open other Excel sheets (by double clicking) it will not use my first instance.
Am I asking for the moon?

Comment by Geoff — February 18, 2010 #
This is great. I wonder if this can this be done when opening Excel files from email attachments in Outlook 2007?

Comment by Neophyte — March 19, 2010 #
Hi all, any ways to “push” this behaviour to all users? eg. like a Group Policy?

I have an Excel addon that only operates correctly on new instances of Excel. 400 people in my company…

Comment by will — April 12, 2010 #
Excellent post dude – quick, simple and it works

Nice

Comment by Mark — May 26, 2010 #
Oh my god… you arew brilliant!!!!

Any way I could get that to be automatically done by Excel itself with a VBA script?

Comment by Simon — August 31, 2010 #

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