Excel opens multiple spreadsheets within one “shell,” which is sort of frustrating to people who use two monitors – rather defeats the purpose. The workaround is pretty simple. I blushed that it took me so long to figure it out, but you may be just as slow as I am so here it is:
Open Excel. Drag it to your extra monitor. Open it again. Reread what I just said – don’t make a new workbook…open it again. Bingo – one on each monitor. You can freely drag and drop between them.
Now…what to do about programs like PowerPoint with a “police” function that won’t let you open more than one instance of the program? Here’s a workaround: How to View PowerPoint on Dual Monitors
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
What they did was update Excel. Now Excel is a “parent” or “shell” program – any document you open will be within that shell – on one monitor. So just do what I said above: open Excel twice – not two documents – two instances of the program. Put one on one monitor and one on the other. Open one document in one instance of the program and the other document in the other instance. There you go. You can cut and paste between documents and see what you’re doing.
What I am trying to do is to be open up 2 excel docs on two seperate monitors. I know it can be done. I found the instructions on the internet a couple of years ago. Unfortunately our technology dept did some fixes…since then it is gone and they don’t know how to fix it. What I was able to do was open and close 2 excel spreadsheets with a single click (for each spreadsheet). Just like you would open an excel doc and a word doc and be able to view them on dual monitors. I was able to open and close them without having to go through any extra steps. Didn’t have to go to the menu bar or nothing.