Open multiple workbooks in an instance of Excel 2013

I want to open more than one workbook in the same instance of Excel 2013 preview. I was told on the Microsoft tech forum that it can't be done. Can anyone confirm this? If that's the case I am done with any future versions of Excel, I can see no earthly reason why users would be forced to tile two instances, hogging up screen real estate and thus severely limiting the view of either workbook, just to copy and paste between workbooks ala Excel 2010.

orerockon

Asked: 2012-12-30

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Microsoft Excel

2 Solutions

LVL 31

gowflowCommented: 2012-12-30

do you mean manually opening Excel workbooks ? yes you can open as many as you want. Thru VBA the instruction workbooks.add will create a new workbook under the same Excel application already started. And Workbooks.Open filename:="My Filename and path" will open the file name called My Filename and path

OOPSSS I just noticed you mentioned Excel 2013 !!! sorry do not have this version but would be surprised it is not the same as older versions as explained above. Will chk anyhow and revert.
gowflow

LVL 16

terencinoCommented: 2012-12-31

Hi orerockon, in my experience Excel 2013 operates very similar to Word - while there are two instances, you don't have to start up Excel again, just open the file from the existing instance and you can copy & paste, or link cells, by switching windows or Alt-Tab the same as before. The process is quite transparent (unlike multiple instances of Excel 2010) and I think you will like the additional flexibility with window management with multiple screens. The only difference is two separate menus as shown below (2013 on 24" screen, 2010 on 17"), but the impact on screen real estate I think is very similar.

There might be other reasons not to upgrade though. To name a few examples, for me I don't like that the menus are all in upper case, the ribbon & icons are minimalist & super-flat like all the 2013 products, the SkyDrive integration really slows it down, and I don't do social networking with my business software. But once I got past those, the major difference between 2013 and 2010 is the better window management and it is a worthwhile trade-off for me. But I'm not going to upgrade our company, we'll stay with our Windows 7/Office 2010 platform and skip Windows 8/Office 2013. The benefits are not sufficiently compelling to go through the torture of the upgrade.

Hope that helps
...Terry

orerockonAuthor Commented: 2012-12-31

If I had a dollar for every time I have read "the benefits of upgrading are not worth the headache" well...and so far that's my take on Office 2013. I played around and managed to open 2 workbooks in the same instance of Excel - I did a repair installation and that seems to have solved that problem. I agree with what you say except for the fact that I most often have worksheets (2 or even 3) tiled horizontally which seems to hog up much more real estate. Even on my giant 25" screen that's too much for my tastes unless I have Excel maximized. Also I didn't realize that the Skydrive hocus pocus is what was slowing it down - seems like the file menu is painfully slow. is there a way to disable that "feature"?

Letting someone else keep my data...would give me the night terrors.

LVL 16

terencinoCommented: 2013-01-01

You can get rid of SkyDrive integration by following these steps
8 Steps To Disable SkyDrive In Office 2013 | PressByte
Good luck!
...Terry

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Open multiple workbooks in an instance of Excel 2013

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