How do I prevent Excel from redisplaying multiple minimized open documents when opening a new document?
Excel 365, minimized workbook pops up when opening another workbook from explorer.
John Colloricchio
shared this idea
4 comments
-
Ian McLean commented
These links explain what is going on, as hinted at by OstTower:
Basically what appears to be happening, is that when you open a 'new instance' of Excel, Excel will automatically merge it in with the existing process, which you have minimized. Excel then knows you've just opened a file so it need to call that process to the front, but that process is now made up of two windows, so it calls them BOTH back up, not just the one for the workbook you just opened.
This article explains how you might work around it, by disabling the merging of processes.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/force-excel-to-open-new-instance
Then, do some registry hackery to always append /x to the command every time you open a workbook too. The /x switch forces Excel to launch a new process and not just open a new window under an existing one. It applies to Excel 2013 and later.
Open Regedit, navigate to Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command
Then under the default REG_SZ value there, append it with " /x". (e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE" "%1" becomes "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE" "%1" /x)
You'll have to do this for all the Excel-related command lines, not just Excel.Sheet.12.
Together with instance merging disabled, this will open Excel in a new process pretty much 100% of the time no matter how you launch it.
Be mindful this can result in weird and inconsistent behaviours with copy/paste between workbooks etc and makes it much harder to do things like grabbing cell references from another workbook, or copying/moving sheets between workbooks, which is probably why the introduced instance merging in the first place.
-
OstTower
commented
This issue is related to these ones:
This applies to all Office applications, like Word and Powerpoint. It is a major annoyance.
To me this is a bug after the removal of the MDI interface, documents are opened in their own windows, but the application still behaves as if it's MDI. It looks like an unfinished job.
-
Steven Z
commented
This is not just an Excel issue, but apply's to Word and I suspect other Office products. It's not a new behavior, but a very old and highly annoying one.
-
Bob LeFave
commented
It's a waste of user time and screen space to have some random/last used Excel file open before the requested Excel file is opened. On a single screen laptop there is zero value add in the extra Excel window, which I always need to close. Worse yet, the new window opens with the formatting of the random popup window. Huh??? I've never used the previous Excel pop up instance and Excel use accounts for 30% of my typical day. Really annoying.