Comments for Brett's Software Development Blog

Comment on Open Excel in Two Windows (Microsoft Excel 2007 / Windows Vista) by Gareth N

Gareth N — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:34:07 +0000

Hi All,

I had the original method of changing the settings via the application associations working on Windows XP but have recently switched to Windows 7 where this no longer seems to be an option.

I have therefore been searching for a method to use on Windows 7 and have found a number of suggestions like this which have led me to the blank screen issue. Adding a few snippets from various site led me to creating the following .reg file which works perfectly:

To use it, copy the contents below and paste it into notepad. Save the file as:

Excel 2007 Dual Screen.reg (Make sure you select “All Files” from the file type drop down).
Exit Notepad and run the file, accepting the warnings and your good to go.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Start copying below this line $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; —————– This file is intended to allow dual screen working in Excel 2007 ONLY —————–
; —- It will not work for earlier version of Excel and modifies the registry so please use carefully —-

; Changes the /e to “%1″ in the default and command keys to fix the issue that stops Excel opening .xls files

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” \”%1\”"
“command”=hex(7):76,00,55,00,70,00,41,00,56,00,36,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,74,00,57,00,7b,00,7e,00,\
24,00,34,00,51,00,5d,00,63,00,40,00,49,00,49,00,3d,00,6c,00,32,00,78,00,61,\
00,54,00,4f,00,35,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

; Deletes the ddeexec key and sub keys to stop Excel using DDE to open the .xls files

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec\application]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec\topic]

; Changes the /e to “%1″ in the default and command keys to fix the issue that stops Excel opening .xlsx files

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” \”%1\”"
“command”=hex(7):76,00,55,00,70,00,41,00,56,00,36,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,74,00,57,00,7b,00,7e,00,\
24,00,34,00,51,00,5d,00,63,00,40,00,49,00,49,00,3d,00,6c,00,32,00,78,00,61,\
00,54,00,4f,00,35,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

; Deletes the ddeexec key and sub keys to stop Excel using DDE to open the .xlsx files

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec\application]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec\topic]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Stop copying above this line $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

If you want to restore to the original, copy the contents below and paste it into notepad. Save the file as:

Excel 2007 Restore Settings.reg (Make sure you select “All Files” from the file type drop down).
Exit Notepad and run the file, accepting the warnings and your good to go.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Start copying below this line $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; ———— This file is intended to restore the defaul opening settings in Excel 2007 ONLY ————
; —- It will not work for earlier version of Excel and modifies the registry so please use carefully —-

; Restores all the settings for .xls files

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open]
@=”&Open”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e”
“command”=hex(7):76,00,55,00,70,00,41,00,56,00,36,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,74,00,57,00,7b,00,7e,00,\
24,00,34,00,51,00,5d,00,63,00,40,00,49,00,49,00,3d,00,6c,00,32,00,78,00,61,\
00,54,00,4f,00,35,00,20,00,2f,00,65,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec]
@=”[open(\"%1\")]”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec\application]
@=”Excel”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec\topic]
@=”system”

; Restores all the settings for .xlsx files

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open]
@=”&Open”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e”
“command”=hex(7):76,00,55,00,70,00,41,00,56,00,36,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,\
21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,74,00,57,00,7b,00,7e,00,\
24,00,34,00,51,00,5d,00,63,00,40,00,49,00,49,00,3d,00,6c,00,32,00,78,00,61,\
00,54,00,4f,00,35,00,20,00,2f,00,65,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec]
@=”[open(\"%1\")]”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec\application]
@=”Excel”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec\topic]
@=”system”

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Stop copying above this line $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Comment on Open Excel in Multiple Windows by Laszlo Lieszkovszky

Laszlo Lieszkovszky — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:26:34 +0000

Fantastic! Works like a charm. Thank you!

Comment on How to: Watch Netflix in Chrome by CB

CB — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:16:36 +0000

Works on Snow Leopard.

Comment on Open Excel in Multiple Windows by Adam Fakes

Adam Fakes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:42:13 +0000

How long have I been wanting to be able to just double click and have a CSV and or a XLS open in a new window and not interfere with any other excel sheet open at the the time

Thanks
Adam

Comment on Open Excel in Multiple Windows by James

James — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:49:04 +0000

You, Sir, are a legend :-)

Your software works perfectly on my setup (W7 64-bit, Office 2K7).

Many, many thanks!

Comment on How to: Watch Netflix in Chrome by toots

toots — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:06:56 +0000

does not work on a mac, tried both ways. Any solutions.

Comment on How to: Watch Netflix in Chrome by TS

TS — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:24:39 +0000

This works on Mac if you do this in Terminal (not sure how to do this with a normal app icon): /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19″

Comment on Open Excel in Multiple Windows by Lori

Lori — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:27:47 +0000

Thanks, this was a great help. Easy to use on my work computer, that I don’t have admin rights to :)

Comment on Open Excel in Two Windows (Microsoft Excel 2007 / Windows Vista) by Iain

Iain — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:28:32 +0000

To Mike Preece: You’ve obviously mucked something up, as it works like a dream. Any normal person would have renamed the entries rather than actually deleting straight off!

Thanks muchly Britt! Please don’t keep hacks like that to yourself!

To Sam ott: Check that the %1 is in quotes “%1″

Comment on Open Excel in Two Windows (Microsoft Excel 2007 / Windows Vista) by chuck_stones

chuck_stones — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:59:05 +0000

Hi Brett!

Thanks for your work on creating this useful little tool. The .bat file method definitely works around the issue of opening separate Excel documents in separate Excel instances, without having to use the ‘ignore other applications that use DDE’ [in Office 2007] (which causes the problem of opening a blank Excel instance when double clicking a file). However, there is one little quirk of this methodology which users should be aware of;

By opening the files in separate instances of Excel, you inhibit the ability to copy formulas from one spreadsheet to another. For example if you enter the formula =sum(A1:C10) into a blank cell which gives a hypothetical total of 30 (value of 1 in each cell), when you copy this cell and paste it into a sheet in a separate instance, you will only copy the formula total, and not the formula itself (i.e. 30, and not =sum(A1:C10)).

Not as annoying as not being able to open separate files in separate instances, but well worth mentioning if you plan to copy large numbers of complicated formulas from one spreadsheet to another.

/chuck

p.s. sorry for the verbose comment