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Answered Windows 7 - Cannot run multiple instances of excel using "Ignore other applications that use DDE" option

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      Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:50 PM
       
       
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      To make it short and simple, I need to be able to have an excel workbook open in a new instance every time I double-click an excel file. As of right now, when multiple excel workbooks are opened, they all get dumped into the same excel instance. There seems to be no viable resolution to this for Windows 7 users.

      With Windows XP, the option to display multiple excel 2007 instances at once could be achieved by checking the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" checkbox. In Windows 7, when this option is checked, an error comes up stating "There was a problem sending the command to the program". I work at an accounting firm, so the ability to run multiple workbooks in different excel instances is absolutely crucial for daily workflow. Below are the steps I have attempted to get multiple excel instances running in Windows 7. If no one can offer a viable solution to this problem, I will be downgrading to Windows XP and will not deploy Windows 7 in our office until Microsoft acknowledges and resolves this issue.
      • I have ran excel 2007 in every compatible mode listed and tried switching the 'Run as Administrator' option off and on with each compatible mode.
      • I attempted to edit the startup command for excel to the following: “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″ , but could not locate which registry setting to change ("The application to perform action" field has been removed from the folder options in Windows 7).
      • I installed the runexcel batch file, pointed all .xls and .xlsx files to run this batch file instead of excel 2007, and changed the icon settings. This allowed for multiple instances of excel to be opened from a saved file. However, we use a program called Engagement that utilizes accounting binders that have excel sheets in them. When opening excel files from this program, the files don't seem to associate with running in the batch file and revert back to opening in a single instance. It seems that the workaround needs to be tied directly to Microsoft excel and not to a batch file.
      • The option to span an excel instance over two monitors and open two workbooks in one spanned instance is not a viable option. Each accountant opens dozens of excel sheets every day, which makes the workaround far too unwieldy.
       

    Answers

    • Tuesday, March 09, 2010 3:27 PM
       
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      Got this from an outside source and thought I would share :)
      In Windows 7 you have to edit the registry to remove DDE completely. This should work for Vista too. Check the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" box in Excel -> Excel Options -> Advanced This alone might work for you by itself - didn't for me, I got an error every time I double-clicked on an excel document. BACK UP your registry.

      Open regedit, browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open Delete the ddeexec key, (or just rename it if you are worried - i just renamed it and it worked) Then click on the "command" key and replace the /e on the Default and command string in that key with "%1" Quotes around %1 are important. NO QUOTES MEANS NO WORKIE!!!!

      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command should look like this: (Default) REG_SZ "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" "%1 command REG_MULTI_SZ vUpAVX!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>tW{~$4Q]c@II=l2xaTO5 "%1"

      Do the same for Excel.Sheet.12 Now Both .xls and .xlsx should open in new windows with no errors.

      I have confirmed that the same problem occurs in Office 2010x64 (32bit probably also) when checking the dde option. This should fix All vista and windows 7 problems with opening excel in seperate windows :) Enjoy!
       

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    • Tuesday, March 02, 2010 8:14 PM
       
       
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      Agreed.

      I hope this is fixed soon. While I don't open that many spreadsheets each day, I do open 15-20 different ones throughout the week. It would be much better to have several Excel windows open on different monitors than to try struggling with looking at one monitor.

      I concur on the DDE issue - if it is checked, Excel will not open the file even if only one spreadsheet is loaded.
       
    • Tuesday, March 09, 2010 3:27 PM
       
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      Got this from an outside source and thought I would share :)
      In Windows 7 you have to edit the registry to remove DDE completely. This should work for Vista too. Check the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" box in Excel -> Excel Options -> Advanced This alone might work for you by itself - didn't for me, I got an error every time I double-clicked on an excel document. BACK UP your registry.

      Open regedit, browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open Delete the ddeexec key, (or just rename it if you are worried - i just renamed it and it worked) Then click on the "command" key and replace the /e on the Default and command string in that key with "%1" Quotes around %1 are important. NO QUOTES MEANS NO WORKIE!!!!

      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command should look like this: (Default) REG_SZ "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" "%1 command REG_MULTI_SZ vUpAVX!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>tW{~$4Q]c@II=l2xaTO5 "%1"

      Do the same for Excel.Sheet.12 Now Both .xls and .xlsx should open in new windows with no errors.

      I have confirmed that the same problem occurs in Office 2010x64 (32bit probably also) when checking the dde option. This should fix All vista and windows 7 problems with opening excel in seperate windows :) Enjoy!
       
    • Tuesday, March 09, 2010 4:18 PM
       
       
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      This worked! FINALLY!

      Excel 2003
      Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

      NOTE: make sure to do this for CSV files too if you use them!

      Thank you Turbo2001rt!
       
    • Friday, March 26, 2010 9:01 PM
       
       
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      The registry hacked worked great on my Windows 7 Pro machine, running Excel 2007. Thank you!

       
    • Wednesday, April 07, 2010 3:02 AM
       
       
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      this works great on my computer, and the problem is finally fixed, thanks so much for the information!

       

      truly helpful! 

       
    • Sunday, May 09, 2010 12:48 AM
       
       
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      THANKS DUDE!  My only other option was to launch Excel and then use File > Open, which was annoying...

      I have Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit (got it free from a Microsoft convention hehe) and Office 2003.  I hate Office 2007...

      I only had the Sheet.8 so I only changed that one.  It worked great. I didn't have to do Sheet12.

      I think Turbo missed a quote at the end of his DEFAULT string value.  He just put: "%1

      It should be "%1"

      Anyways, for my HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command\, it had these two string values and this is what they looked like AFTER I changed them:

      Default string value:    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

      Command string value:    (f'^Vn-}f(ZXfeAR6.jiEXCELFiles>!De@]Vz(r=f`1lfq`?R& "%1" 

       

       
    • Thursday, May 13, 2010 7:38 PM
       
       
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      Dear Turbo2001rt,

      Thanks a lot for sharing your know-how!

      No longer get  the message "There was a problem sending the comand to the application" while oppening excel files. Your solution worked smoothly for Excel 2003 under Windows 7.

      Regards

       

       

       

       
    • Saturday, June 05, 2010 2:22 AM
       
       
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      Thank you, Turbo2001rt, that worked like a charm.  I would also like to have multiple instances of excel for other file types like .csv (comma separated values) and .xlsm (macro-enabled spreadsheets).  Does anyone know which registry keys I need to change to get those to work?  In general, how can you tell which keys refer to which file types?  It doesn't seem intuitive that "Excel.Sheet.12" affects .xlsx files and "Excel.Sheet.8" affects .xls files to me, so I don't know how to extrapolate.

       

       
    • Monday, July 26, 2010 12:54 PM
       
       
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      I've created an account just to thank Turbo2001rt for the Registry Hack! Worked great on my Win7-64 / Office 2010-64 setup.

      Althoug instead of "/e" I replaced "/dde"..

       
    • Thursday, August 05, 2010 5:04 PM
       
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      I made a reg file to apply this quickly and easily. (Export your registry keys first, as always.)

      Save as .reg file, execute/merge, rejoice. (Rejoicing is optional.)

      Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open]
@="&Open"

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
"command"=hex(7):78,00,62,00,27,00,42,00,56,00,35,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
 21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
 00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,56,00,69,00,6a,00,71,00,\
 42,00,6f,00,66,00,28,00,59,00,38,00,27,00,77,00,21,00,46,00,49,00,64,00,31,\
 00,67,00,4c,00,51,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open]
@="&Open"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
"command"=hex(7):78,00,62,00,27,00,42,00,56,00,35,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
 21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
 00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,56,00,69,00,6a,00,71,00,\
 42,00,6f,00,66,00,28,00,59,00,38,00,27,00,77,00,21,00,46,00,49,00,64,00,31,\
 00,67,00,4c,00,51,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec]


       
    • Wednesday, September 15, 2010 1:02 PM
       
       
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      Thanks for the tip. I am running office 2003 on a windows 7 machine. I tried your fix and its not working for me below you will find what my registry entries look like. am I missing some thing. thanks for any help you can give.

      sheet8

      "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

      ']gAVn-}f(ZXfeAR6.jiEXCELFiles>!De@]Vz(r=f`1lfq`?R& "%1"

      sheet12

      "C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

       

       
    • Friday, October 08, 2010 1:11 AM
       
       
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      I tried this...and bing it worked.Thanks a ton!!!

      I'm running Windows 7 (64 bit) and Office 2010.

      Woot!!

       

      P.S.  As stated above, I swapped out the "%1" with /dde instead of /e. In addition to my registery for command looked different.

      Here's what they both looked liked after:

      "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

      xb'BV5!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>VijqBof(Y8'w!FId1gLQ "%1"

       

       
    • Wednesday, October 20, 2010 1:57 PM
       
       
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      Turbo's solution worked for me - I now get a new excel instance when selecting files from Windows Explorer.  However, sometimes I want the files to open in the same instance, but this solution gives a new instance for each excel document.  I normally have two instances, one for each screen, and I want to be able to open an excel file from Windows Explorer into the last instance that I had active.  I'm used to how Windows XP works, but can't seem to figure out how to get Windows 7 to work exactly the same.  Does anybody have the answer?

       
    • Thursday, November 04, 2010 4:22 PM
       
       
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      Hi,

      I had the same problem and Turbo2000's solution worked! But I'm having the problem with PowerPoint and I can't seem to fix it because I can't find the PowerPoint's ddeexec registy key. Any ideas?

      Thanks

       
    • Thursday, November 04, 2010 5:50 PM
       
       
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      How about opening the second one via the Excel icon? 

      Meaning, double click on one file ie: budget.xlsx to open Excel and then go to your Start/All Programs/Microsoft Office and right click on the Excel icon.  Or you have Excel shortcut on your taskpane, right click on it and choose Microsoft Excel, usually 3rd from the bottom in the list.

      Works for me.

       
    • Wednesday, November 17, 2010 6:22 PM
       
       
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      Turbo2001rt,

      I just wanted to say thank you passing along this information. This one was hard to find, but man it worked perfectly!

      All the best,

      John

       
    • Monday, March 07, 2011 11:26 AM
       
       
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      Hi, I am using Windows 7 (64 Bit) with MS Office 2007. I think I have the exact opposite problem. When I double click on an excel file it opens in an entirely new instance. So if I have to apply formulas or VLookUps between two different sheets the Function Argument box doesn't recognize the other excel file which is open. Can you please guide me as to how to enable excel to open the file(s) in the same instance when I double click them. Thanks a million.
       
    • Sunday, April 03, 2011 3:22 PM
       
       
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      Hello All

      This has definitely been the easiest way to sort out this problem. Many thanks to everyone.

       
    • Thursday, April 14, 2011 4:06 PM
       
       
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      This fix finally worked like a charm after what felt like an eternity of searching the web.

       

      Thanks a bunch!

       
    • Friday, July 22, 2011 6:01 AM
       
       
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      Thank you! This worked!
       
    • Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:29 PM
       
       
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      Thank you, Turbo2001rt, that worked like a charm.  I would also like to have multiple instances of excel for other file types like .csv (comma separated values) and .xlsm (macro-enabled spreadsheets).  Does anyone know which registry keys I need to change to get those to work?  In general, how can you tell which keys refer to which file types?  It doesn't seem intuitive that "Excel.Sheet.12" affects .xlsx files and "Excel.Sheet.8" affects .xls files to me, so I don't know how to extrapolate.

       

      For .csv and .xlsm file, do the same to "Excel.CSV" and "Excel.SheetMacroEnabled.12"

       
    • Wednesday, October 05, 2011 9:59 AM
       
       
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      Thanks Turbo2001rt. Your solution worked like a charm. This has been bugging me for ages.
       
    • Wednesday, February 01, 2012 2:24 PM
       
       
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      I have the same problem, do you could solve?
      and if so, could you tell me how you did it?

      thanks

       
    • Friday, February 10, 2012 9:54 PM
       
       
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      MikeT1831, Thanks for the answer! I spent hours trying to solve this for a client and was out of ideas when I read your post. I should mention that this works for my client's set up:

      • Windows 2008 Foundation Server R2
      • Office 2010 Pro running Business Contact Manager

      Again, thanks for taking the time. If I could buy you a cup of coffee I would.

      -- Kevin

       
    • Wednesday, February 15, 2012 5:30 PM
       
       
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      Thanks Turbo2001rt!
       
    • Friday, March 09, 2012 12:47 PM
       
       
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      Thanks!

      Actually I only had to check the "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)" option and it worked! :)

      Cheerz,

      Arne

       
    • Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:24 PM
       
       
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      So excited to try TURBO's solution this with Excel.  Does anyone know how to do this with PowerPoint?  Same need exists as Excel.  TY!!
       
    • Wednesday, May 16, 2012 4:27 PM
       
       
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      This worked like a champ for me!  I appreciate it!  I do have one more question for you.  Now when I receive an excel file via email, I can't open the attachment.  Well better said I can open the attached excel file, but when it opens it just shows a blank screen.  All toolbars, home buttons, or the "ribbon" etc... are still there, but that is about it.  If I copy the file and then save it to my desktop or my documents and then open it, it works just fine.  I just can't open and view the file when trying to open it from my email inbox (Outlook 2010).  Any ideas or suggestions?

      Thanks!