Showing posts with label workbooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workbooks. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2013

Opening workbooks by running separate instances of Excel

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

This post is brought to you by Chad Rothschiller, a Program Manager in the Excel Team.

Opening workbooks by running separate instances of ExcelIn Excel 2013, each of your workbooks opens in its own window, similar to Word and PowerPoint. This means that each workbook has its own ribbon and top-level window frame that you can move and resize independent from your other open workbooks. This functionality can improve multitasking, visibility, and analysis across workbooks.

We'll discuss some of the more advanced aspects of these changes, in particular how to have workbooks running in different instances (or processes) of Excel.

Excel 2013 helps prevent accidental extra instances (or processes) of Excel running. We've found that extra instance introduced unexpected and sometimes confusing results (for example, pasting a range from a workbook in one instance of Excel to a workbook in a different instance of Excel works differently than if the two workbooks were running in the same instance). In the new Excel, we have built new detection logic that knows when an additional, new instance of Excel is starting up (e.g., you clicked Excel on the start menu), and merges that workbook (and new Excel instance) into the instance of Excel that's already running.  In other words, you won't very often see more than one Excel.exe in the Task Manager. Word has behaved this way for several releases now, and it is a much simpler model to understand.

However, we've built in a couple of ways for you to get a second (or third) instance of Excel running, if that's really what you want. Most often, people want to do this when they know they have a huge workbook that takes a long time to open (or some other process that takes a long time to complete, such as a data refresh or a calculation), and they want to keep working in Excel while that long-running process finishes. One good way to accomplish this is to get two instances of Excel running: one you can use to kick off the long process, and the other you can use to keep working while you wait for the other process to finish.

In Windows 8, one way to start an additional instance of Excel is to press and hold the ALT key, then, without releasing the ALT key, right-click the Excel icon in the Windows taskbar and click the Excel icon above the Unpin option.  

Continue holding down the ALT key until you are asked whether you want to start a new instance of Excel.

Click Yes to get a second instance of Excel up and running.

In general, anytime Excel is starting up, holding down the ALT key triggers the above dialog asking about a new instance.

There's also a switch for booting Excel from the command prompt: /x. In Windows 8, press the Windows key and X key at the same time and then select Run

Type excel.exe /x, and then click OK. This should launch a new instance of Excel.

The switch to Single Document Interface (SDI) might impact some of the code in your add-ins or other solutions, particularly if the code:

Works with Window methods, events, and properties. All existing application-level window methods, events, and properties are unaffected by this change. All existing workbook-level window methods, events, and properties now operate on the top-level window for that workbook.Users custom ribbon controls and/or task panes. Code working with custom ribbon controls and task panes might need to be updated to handle multiple custom ribbon controls that are present when more than one workbook is open. Remember that each workbook gets its own instance of the ribbon, along with all the controls it contains.Employs modeless userforms. Now that there are multiple top level Excel windows, none of them is the master. Which makes keeping modeless userforms on top of all Excel windows very difficult. Code might need to be added to help keep the userform on top.

Thanks everyone for reading. I hope you all get wonderful benefits from being able to spread your workbooks out on your screens!

--Chad Rothschiller, Excel Program Manager


View the original article here

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Open Excel workbooks in separate windows and view them side by side

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

 This week we continue exploring new features in Excel 2013. This post is brought to you by Chad Rothschiller, a Program Manager in the Excel Team.

View Excel workbooks side by side"How do I open my workbooks in separate windows?" This has been a common inquiry from many of our customers who want to look at their workbooks side by side, or spread them across more than one monitor.

Good news: starting with Excel 2013, each of your workbooks opens in its own window, similar to Word and PowerPoint today. That means that each workbook has its own ribbon and top-level window frame that you can move and resize independent from your other open workbooks. This functionality can improve multitasking, visibility, and analysis across workbooks.

In computing terminology, this is called Single Document Interface (SDI). Versions of Excel before the 2013 release used Multiple Document Interface (MDI), where all workbook windows were contained within a top-level "master" container window.

Here's an example of four new workbooks. Note that each one has its own window and ribbon:

Now that you have multiple windows, how should you arrange them? Well, there are plenty of options and below are some favorites:

Smart Snapping: Grab the top of the window, and drag it to the top, left, or right edge of your screen, then let go. The window automatically resize:

Drag Left: Position on the left half of the screenDrag Right: Position on the right half of the screenDrag Top: Fills the entire screen

Windows Taskbar: If you hold down the Shift Key and then right click the Excel icon on the Windows Task Bar you will see options for arranging your open windows. The cool thing about these options is that if you have multiple monitors, Windows remembers each workbook's monitor and arranges workbooks displayed within the same monitor.

Excel Ribbon: Click on View the Arrange All to see more options for arranging your workbooks:

Note that you can still create new windows (or multiple windows) showing the same workbook. Similarly, the "View Side by Side" and "Synchronous Scrolling" features work just like they used to.

Thanks for learning more about this new feature in Excel 2013. I hope you all get wonderful benefits from being able to arrange workbooks on your screens!  In a future post, we'll go into a couple more advanced topics such as "Merging Instances and Long Running Operations" and how they work with pre-existing add-ins. In the meantime, let us know in the comments how you're planning to use this new feature or anything else you'd like to see in future versions.

--Chad Rothschiller, Excel Program Manager


View the original article here