In the good versions of Excel (prior to 2007) one could open multiple workbooks in the same window. Now, one has multiple instances of Excel (and every other Office app) whenever one opens more than one document / spreadsheet.

Again, here are the issues:

1. Stability - I experience ~3X Excel crashes in 2016 (SDI) as compared to 2010 (MDI)


2. Screen Space / Real Estate - Drastically reduced screen space when each workbook requires its own Ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar and Formula Bar


3. Toolbar to Workbook Confusion - One Ribbon + Quick Access Toolbar + Formula Bar to control all workbooks is far less confusing (MDI)


4. Navigation Between Workbooks - *a. With MDI, Ctl+Tab and Ctl+Shift+Tab worked flawlessly to cycle (forwards/backwards) through all open workbooks in a single instance of Excel. Using the same key combinations in SDI, I always see a screen “blip” of the last used non-Excel program – why? Even worse, sometimes it cycles a non-Excel program into the mix. When I’m trying to cycle between two workbooks, I do NOT want Windows Explorer thrown into the cycle!


5. Links (across workbooks) - Ability to update links between workbooks is less flexible – sometimes you want links to update and sometimes you do not. In the past, we could easily open a new/separate instance of Excel and prevent links from updating between workbooks. Now, it is far more difficult to open a new/separate instance of Excel and it is more confusing to work between 2 instances


6. VBA – macro instability - Running macros between multiple Excel Workbooks is not consistent in SDI – sometimes it will choose the next workbook, sometimes it does not. There are a lot of comments on this topic. I can only imagine the countless hours of VBA work that have been destroyed by the forced SDI


7. Closing Workbooks - With MDI, you could close and save ALL workbooks with a couple of mouse clicks. In SDI, you must close and save each workbook individually. If you have ~10 large workbooks open at once this will require you to stay engaged in the process as you will be forced to wait for each workbook to save, so you can save and close the next workbook (another massive waste of time/productivity).


8. Opening Workbooks - *With MDI, we could count on workbooks to open and be sized where we had saved them. Now, they open in the exact same size and cascade – WHY? How would you like to go to your desk every day, only to find everything in a different drawer? That’s not where you put it last time you used it?… so why keep moving things on us?


9. Minimize/Maximize Workbooks - Per post on 6-Aug-2018, working with 12 workbooks, with MDI you could use 3 mouse clicks, but with SDI it now takes 18 mouse clicks. Do you think the customer desires to use their mouse more?

In Excel 2010 we were able to highlight numbers and have their sums displayed in the grey status bar towards the bottom of the sheet. Working with 2 monitors, this feature was very helpful.

After upgrading to Excel 2016 the status bar of the non active/selected workbook disappears instead of the sum being viewable of the non active workbook.

The feature was helpful for at least 2 open excel instances where we can view the sum of the non active workbook and it would be great to have back instead of being forced to click in out of each workbook to see the status bar sums.

Workbooks with many worksheets can be difficult to navigate. One poster has suggested having multiple levels to the worksheet tabs.

As an extension to this, we could have worksheet groupings where several worksheets could be contained within a grouping. You could then select a particular grouping (which would look like worksheet tabs and be placed below the actual worksheet tabs) and then have access to all the worksheets in that particular grouping. There would also be an 'All' grouping that contained all the worksheets.

These grouping could be included in the workbook protection so that you could choose which worksheet groupings users could view