Opening Excel Files In Different Windows

Today a friend of mine rang me up to check whether, is there any way to open excel files in different windows, rather than getting the files opened in the same application window, which was excel's default behavior. My friend is having a system with dual monitor and was trying to open excel files in both the monitors, unfortunately both the files were getting open in the same excel main window, and all attempts to drag files from the main excel window to the secondary monitor didn't succeed.

I did went through the options in excel, but unfortunately no setting could be found to get this done. I thought this should not be an odd case, as this might have been faced by others too, so why not search and see if there is some solutions out there in the net. After going through a couple of solutions, I found the one which I was looking for. Some additional steps were required to get this done, which wasn't mentioned there in the solution. So I though of documenting the solution, so as to benefit others if the need arises.

I came to find two solutions for this. First one is dam simple, but a temporary solution. While the second one is what I recommend. So lets start with the simple one.

1. Open Excel application.
2. Drag the file you wish to open to excel application.
3. To open the second file, open a new excel instance, i.e. open excel from start menu or by typing "excel" in start-> run dialog. (don't forget exclude the quotes while entering command in run dialog)
4. Drag the file you wish to open to this new instance of excel application. Thats it, now you have two instances of excel application which you could drag around multiple monitors as you wish.

Now lets move on to the second solution, the one I would recommend for power users.

Assumptions: Microsoft Excel 2007 or above running on windows XP (The settings locations might be different in case of Windows 7, but the solution should work with both Vista and Win7).

1. Open Windows explorer. (Press Win + E key combination or open "My Computer")
2. Open "Folder Options" from "Tools-> Folder Options"
3. Select tab "File Types"
4. Inside "Registered File Types" search for "XLSX" under "Extensions" column (Excel file extension for formats from 2007 onwards)
5. Make sure you had selected "XLSX" under "Extensions" column.
6. Click "Advanced" button. A new window with the title "Edit File Type" should open up.
7. Un-check "Browse in same window" if checked.
8. Under "Actions" list select "Open" (The text highlighted in bold).
9. Click "Edit" button.
10. A new window with the title "Editing action for type: Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet" should open up.
11. In the textbox labeled "Application used to perform action", update the text to the following. Note: Append the text /e "%1" after the excel path. Now it should look like the one below except for the path to Excel.exe
    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"
12. Uncheck the "Use  DDE" checkbox.
13. Click "OK" button to close the window.
14. Click "OK" button in the "Edit File Type" window.
15. Now execute the steps from 5 to 14 by selecting "XLS" file extension.

After making all these changes close any open excel documents and try opening two excel files. Now you should see those two files opened up in two different windows.