Excel Launcher 1.1 (9/1/2010)
So after some comments in the forums about my installer having problems I have updated Excel Launcher to use a new installation package (NSIS) and also made it easier to set the location of your Excel installation. NSIS did not support associating Excel files with Excel launcher so you will need to manually associate them using the technique shown at the end of this blog post. Please uninstall any existing version of Excel Launcher before installing this one. Download Excel Launcher 1.1
- Abandoned MS Installation package and switched to NSIS to stop bug where every time you opened a file a searching screen appeared.
- Running Excel Launcher standalone now prompts you to set your Excel installation location every time and not just the first time
I am a multi-monitor fanatic. If I could afford it I would have three 24″ monitors sitting on my office desk. Of course all this real estate requires good window management and fortunately Microsoft has finally improved theirs with Windows 7. Dragging windows up against the borders of a monitor causes them to fill either half or the whole monitor. This is fantastic for having side-by-side windows for work. You can also use the Windows Key + the arrow keys to quickly move windows across your monitors. Bravo!
But of course one of my most used applications does not support opening files in new processes. Excel. Why?!?! Why oh why must files always open in an existing Excel instance? This happens in other apps like Internet Explorer, but I can rip off the tabs and make them into new windows. Only Excel seems to cage me into this single window paradigm. After some googling I found a lot of people in the same boat and some very unsatisfactory workarounds including:
- Modifying the shortcuts for all of your Excel files so that they open in a new instance – I don’t always use the same files so this is out.
- Disabling DDE – which is no longer possible on Windows 7 and Vista
- Dragging your Excel window to be really big and then using the internal Excel Window management – not good for multimonitor
- Always launching a new Excel instance and choosing file -> open -> browse (sigh)
Disappointed, I resolved to manually opening new instances of Excel. But during a restless night it occurred to me – Excel does not open as a new process, but an application launcher could open new instances of Excel. What a fun programming project! I would create my own executable that would be associated with Excel file types -> xls, xlsx, csv, etc. That program would launch Excel and tell it to open the file. Bingo bango boingo we are in business.
So I sat down and within thirty minutes I had working code. I then thought it would be fun to make an installer instead of a dumb exe since there seemed to be so many people looking for this solution. Why not make it easy for them? I wish I had made it easy on myself. Four hours and many google searches later I finally have my program done and created in an installer package. In case anyone is wondering why it took so long I had to account for the fact that I am installing to the Program Files directory. With that comes access restrictions. Then I had to figure out how to read/write/store stuff to the registry. That required error handling. Auto updating research, tray application research, blah, blah blah.
Okay, enough complaining, this is what you are looking for. Download and install Excel Launcher. When you run it the first time it will prompt you for the location of your Excel application. This should be in program files or program files(x86): \microsoft office\officeXX\Excel.exe. Next associate any files that you want to open in a new Excel instance to Excel Launcher. By default XLS, XLSX and CSV files will be associated with Excel Launcher. To associate other files
- Right mouse button on an the file -> Open With -> Choose Default Program -> Browse
- Navigate to Excel Launcher.exe which should be in your program files directory
- Check the box for “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.”
That’s it. Now whenever you open an Excel file it will use Excel Launcher which will create a new Excel process for you each time and open the file. As of now there is no argument passing so if you use arguments they will be ignored. If there is enough interest I may implement this for people in my copious free time.
Some ideas for improvements:
- Prompt user to associate common file types when installing
- Instead of storing Excel path in registry store it in an xml file in program files directory. This will allow multiple program types to leverage this functionality.
- Allow passing of arguments through to Excel
- Support DDE? I never really researched this so don’t even know if this is possible.
Tags: excel, new process, new window
Fantastic & great job
Thanks much!! After may days of searching and trying different things your solution works.
Thanks and brilliant
Many thanks for this. I am having a bit a a problem though. I followed all the steps you indicated but now the files are not opening at all. What do you think have I done wrong? Your kind assistance is urgent. Many thanks.
You can always reassociate the files with Excel. Just right click an excel file, choose Open With…. Pick Microsoft Excel, make sure that the ‘always open with’ checkbox is ticked and finally open. You can always force Excel to redo file association registry entries.
Click Start Button
Type cmd in the search field
Right click on the command prompt application and choose Run as Administrator
Navigate to your Excel installation location from command prompt
Type in excel.exe /regserver
Restart your computer and all file association settings should be fixed.
I will try this. many thanks…I’ve got a report deadline and I tried to default to Windows 97 because my Microsoft 2010 is only a starter and not all features are available. i think I’ve messed up the system and even though how many times I try to recover the system, excel would not open and the prompt is windows run in 2010 and then it does not open because i have not secured the licences. Really in a predicament now. Please help.
I tried what you indicated…typing the cmd…but it tells me excel.exe is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
I think I know what may be wrong. Excel 2007/2010 use a different file format than Excel 97/2003. They save files as .xlsx files which are not backwards compatible. If you have new spreadsheets that you created in Excel 2010 then you will need to open them in 2010 again and resave them as Excel 97/2003 files.
You received the batch command failed error because you were not in the same directory as your excel installation. You have to navigate the command window to something like c:\program files\microsoft office\office14\ directory. Then type the command. Not that I think it will matter because of the above issue.
Hi there – was searching for another problem I’m having and found your blog, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to help…!
i can’t open them from email attachments, right clicking on the short-cut files, OR going in via windows explorer!
All of a sudden every time I try open an Excel file (2010) running Windows 64bit it says it’s ‘installing something’ and then gives me the error….”error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid” and won’t open the file.
Any suggestions or solutions would be SO appreciated!
Thanks
By the way – i installed your Excel launcher thinking it may help and i got as far as running it, acecpting the agreement, saving it and then it asked to set the location which opened the location it seemed to saved in, and then…nothing…i couldnt open the file or get it to work…?
then i clicked on one of my excel files that had the Excel Launcher logo and it’s just hanging…won’t open the file either
Your Excel is broken. My program just opens Excel in a new instance. It doesn’t make it unbroken. Sounds like you need to either repair or reinstall Excel. I would uninstall my program while you are troubleshooting Excel as it will just get in the way.
Thank you so much for your solution. Pure genius.
Do you know if there is an equivalent solution for Microsoft Powerpoint?
Alvin
I came upon your fix for this irritating problem with Excel that Microsoft seem not to have thought about: The ability to view two or more spreadsheets side by side – as with word docs. – just by clicking on the file names. I installed it and – as you say – bingo!
Seriously impressed! Since huge RAM and multiple large screens etc. all allow this visually it is crazy that Excel does not allow it functionally – But TCS to the rescue!
Thanks
Amazing…..
Thanks a lot. Great work
No change by me to anything this morning but for some reason [ probably an MS update] Launcher stopped working. – back to the old ‘one Excel window’ problem. However I have uninstalled and reinstalled Excel Launcher and now it seems to be working again Phew!
Paul
No change by me to anything this morning but for some reason Launcher stopped working. – back to the old ‘one Excel window’ problem. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Excel Launcher and now Excel documents will not even open. So I changed the default “open with” back to Microsoft Excel. Now docs will open but back to the “one window problem” again.
Rebooted computer after above. Now can’t even open an Excel doc. … it just hangs and stalls the computer. I am going to uninstall your program since it apparently does not work in Windows 7 with MS Office 2010. Hopefully, uninstalling your program will get things back to normal and allow me to at least open an Excel doc.
My program is indeed compatible with both Windows 7 and Office 2010. I use it myself. Probably an Excel update caused your files to be reassociated with another program. You have two options, (btw rebooting isn’t going to solve anything as the program has nothing to do with the boot process.) One, uninstall Excel Launcher and reassociate your excel files with Excel.exe. There are instructions for doing this at the end of my blog post. Two, find Excel launcher in your program files directory and run Excel Launcher.exe. This will prompt you to reassociate the application with Excel. If neither of those solutions work then Excel itself may be broken (no fault of mine, my program does not touch Excel AT ALL). If you cannot run Excel from your start menu then Excel Launcher will never work.
Oh Dear, Its gone again. Maybe another Excel update. Have removed Launcher and re installed. Could not open any Excel files (only Excel itself from start menu)
but got a permanent ‘thinking’ circle. Re booted and uninstalled Launcher. Excel files now open but I still get ‘thinking’ circle and “opening excel files in Launcher” still appears in Task list. This must be something to do with ‘associating’ excel files with Launcher. I do not really understand that. There is some reference above about an explanation at the end of your blog – but I cannnot see it. Can you help|?
great app!
Doesn’t work when opening multiple programs from a windows jump list. 
Brilliant, thanks!
Great little solution to a problem that MS *should* fix, but probably never will …
after i download a file. it said the file dont exist. and when i check in program files it said 0 size. can you help me out?
Hi Mark,
It sounds like either a corporate firewall or your AV software is preventing download of executables. Sorry, there isn’t anything I can do about that. Try downloading the app from home or a friends computer and then copying it over.
[...] is opening Excel files in separate windows thanks to Thomas C [...]
Thanks so much, your absolute life saver… Got my Radeon HD 4650 series to work on windows 8 consumer preview
Thank you very much. Just what i, and it lokks a lot of other people, need. Used the “anti DDE” method in XP, but comapany decided to scrap XP.
Never used Vista, it looks like every second version of Windows is a dud.
cool, thank’s
The following would work for Win7 64 bit,(right click excel and open in new instance submenu)
Open a notepad and paste the following and save it as:- Excel OpenInNewInstance.reg
and right click merge…. you are done.. right click your excels and open in new instance
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\OpenInNewInstance]
@=”Open In NewInstance”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\OpenInNewInstance\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\” \”%1\””
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\OpenInNewInstance]
@=”Open In NewInstance”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\OpenInNewInstance\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office14\\EXCEL.EXE\” \”%1\””
Thanks Chakri! This solution does miss one of my personal use cases though, which is when third party apps automatically open Excel worksheets it bypasses any rightclick method. I hope others find your suggestion useful too. Also as a note to others reading this, you may need to modify those reg entries. Excel.Sheet.12 refers to Office 2007 I believe. Office 2010 will be Excel.Sheet.14 and Office 2013 will have something newer yet.
Excelent, easiest solution yet. Thank you for taking your time to do this.
fantastic software, works without any problems so far. Thanks a lot for the clever solution.
Works perfectly on Windows 7 / Excel 2010. Pure Genius! Thank you.
Tom, Its all gone to pot again following another windows update [ how do you stop them?]
I have tried re associating excel files with Launcher but get a message, when I click on an Excel file, that the file is “not a valid Win32 application”.
I then tried to reverse this but it looks like I’m going to have to re associate every Excel file with Excel individually – which is a nightmare.
I am still a little unclear where Launcher needs to sit because the location strings on my machine do not quite match those on your instructions but I dont seem to be able to retrieve it all.
I have now uninstalled launcher but each time I click on an Excel file I get an “Open with” box pop up – and I need to click OK with Excel highlighted. So thats a bit of a bind too.
Do you understand why MS updates keep undoing your excellent work?
Paul
i’m using xp, but i can’t imagine it would be too different in Win7. i just wrote a batch file that opens the file in a new instance of excel. once an excel file is opened with the batch file, it appears in the “open with” right click menu. so now if i want to open a file in a new instance i just right click the file, go to “open with” and then select the batch file.
i named the file “New instance of excel.cmd” and the contents are as follows:
start “” “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE” %1
exit
enjoy
This works, but once associated, it changes the icons to something other than what you want being displayed for spreadsheets — can’t figure out how to get the default icon to appear with Excel’s (tried .BAT instead of .CMD too — same problem). If anyone has the tip on this, it’d be much appreciated.
i didn’t associate the file type with the batch file, so the icons don’t change (i did not check off the box, “always use the selected program to open this type of file”). so by default a double click will open in the same instance. if i want a new instance, i right click and “open with new instance of excel.” this allows me the choice of opening any file in the same instance or a new one.
there is free software out there that can convert the .cmd or .bat file to an .exe file. once it’s an .exe there is other free software to add the excel icon to the application. i don’t really care much about icons, so i didn’t do this. however, i know it can be done pretty easily if you google around a bit.
Thanks for the ideas Skippy! I hope that other people find it useful. Your suggestion is great for people that want to roll their own solution. This is basically how Excel Launcher works.
Not sure what is going on with your icons. Excel launcher has its own icon which is very similar to the Excel 2010 icon. It comes in a variety of sizes, so it should work whether you are using icons from as small as 16×16 to as large as 256×256. If you are manually mapping icons, then I have found that Windows requires you to log on/off sometimes to see the effect.
THANKYOU
Me again I’m afraid.
Trying to add Launcher to another computer and I have the usual problem. I think I need to write my own instructions becasue I’m afraid I find those above hard to follow:
The problem always is associating launcher asd Excel files.
Part of the problem may be actually finding Excel – not as easy as it should be! Does not appear under MS Office in my laptop.
What is “console application1′ that appears when I click on ‘open file with’?
Its not Launcher becasue nothing happens when I click on it.
Hi Paul,
New baby in the world now so I unfortunately won’t be able to help you out. I would recommend turning on file extensions in Windows and then finding Excel.exe in your program files directory. Last time you had linked to a shortcut which is not an executable. This is the only help I will be able to provide.
Is it possible to change the name “console application1″ of the exe to something like “Excel Launcher”?
It would be more logical for the end user
Hi Geert, I will need to update my project to change this. I have been pretty busy, but I have some free time coming up. Please check back soon and I will see about an update.
Dear Tom,
Is it possible to use the Excel Launcher, not to open an Excel file in a new session but to an existing session?
I’m using Excel Launcher to work around an Windows 7/windows 2008 R2 focus issue.
Sometimes when opening an new Excel file, the file is opened but put to the background.
No, this isn’t possible. The focus issue is a Windows 7 choice that is supposed to prevent applications from interrupting your work. Unfortunately there are cases such as yours where this isn’t desired. Theoretically Excel Launcher could be reprogrammed to do this. If you are interested let me now, but I would have to bill for it. I don’t have time to tweak it just for one person.
Great job. Thanks!
Tom,
Program works great for files on my computer but when I attempt to open excel files that are stored on the internet (ie my company’s internet server) I get an error stating that excel doesn’t exist on my computer. Is this a firewall issue? Or maybe it’s due to me saving this launcher directly over Excel? Any help?
Not exactly sure. Are you accessing the files on a network drive? For example they reside at \\company_server\folder\myfile.xls? Or are they actually at a weblink like: http://mycompany.com/myfile.xls? The first case should work. The second case I’m not so sure.
I love this app!
tom,
thank you for your genius…. I love it…!
I am annoyed by this prob long time ago.
Thank you very much.
You have made my work so much easier.
Hi Tom,
Unfortunately, I haven’t tried your program yet, and have accessed via registry, changing and adding the “%1″, etc. and had an issue of accessing excel files from Microsoft SharePoint. Not sure if your program can power through.
Let me know, and I’ll try reversing the changes
Thanks
I’m not exactly sure what “accessing excel files from Microsoft Sharepoint” means. The %1 workaround sounds very similar to how my program works though. If I had to guess, I would say it would encounter the same issue.
> Only Excel seems to cage me into this single window paradigm.
In Excel 2003 at least, there is an option for this. “Tools” menu -> “Options” menu -> “View” tab -> “Show” heading -> “Windows in Taskbar” checkbox. Of course this doesn’t help if you really want a new process not just a new toplevel window.
> Disabling DDE … is no longer possible on Windows 7 and Vista
I don’t have them to try it – in what sense is it impossible? (and how would you normally “disable dde”? For Excel 2003 under Win XP I would disable it just for Excel by removing the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec)
Hi, Thank you very much, I also love multiple monitors and this saves me from a lot of headbanging my desk
Good job!
Thanks a lot Tom. I’m amazed that “opening in the same window” is still Excel’s default behavior in this day and age.
After installation ExcelLauncher was only associated with .xls, not .xlsx, but that was easy to fix.
My only suggestion: could you tone-down the icon a bit? That big “XL” is pretty aggressive compared to the Office 2010/2013 icons.
I’ll keep the icon thing in mind if I do another update.
Yea!! Thank you very much!
Works on Windows 7, Office 2010:
From Excel, Click the Home Button >
Excel Options > Advanced > General
and make sure Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is selected.
Then restart excel. Now every excel that you open (outside of excel) will open a new excel window.
Scroll up to the “Display” heading
Tick “Show all windows in the Taskbar”
Close Excel
See the magic
Thank you so much for making this helper app! I think Office 2013 finally has an option to open workbooks in new processes, but this has been a damned lifesaver for at least a couple years for me! You should take donations!
You are very welcome Travis. As opposed to a donation, please go out of your way to do something nice for someone.
Tom,
You are a mad genius! Thank you. I will pay it forward, thusly: look at an app called ASAP Utilities, for Excel. (No, on my mother’s life I’m not involved in any way with them.)
Great, is working very good. THX
@Craig, you just need to find the correct EXCEL.exe, so it runs e.g. with Excel 2010. I found it under the folder /office14
The program works fine, but I have one problem with a macro in Excel.
I have written macro that opens a excel file from your program (only to pop up in another window) but if file name is form “XXX(space)YYY” your program is try to open file XXX and another file YYY. If your program is replacing with notepad.exe file is opened right “XXX(space)YYY”.
Macro
NPOFile = “C:\path to your file” & “C:\excel to launch”
Call Shell(NOPFile, 1)
Is there any way to fix this?
Hi Hubert,
I’d have to recompile the program to escape parentheticals. It is possible, but I my life is totally swamped with a newborn and other things. I’m afraid I won’t have time to tackle this for awhile. I wish I could help you sooner. I will keep your feedback in mind when I get a chance to make another version of the program.
Kind Regards,
Tom
The program is great, but it does not work in multiuser environment. It worked for me, but nobody else on that computer could open anything. And I’d prefer another name, I am used to run excel by win->excel->enter and when it runs Your program it is not what intended. And it could preserve the excel icon. But without this glitches it is good piece of software.
The program will work in a multi-user environment, but it takes a couple steps. Have your other users run Excel Launcher.exe and point it at the local Excel instance. The program saves the Excel location on a per user basis. I agree that the behavior could be better in multi-user. I did not think about this when developing.
I am keeping the look-alike icon because some workplaces don’t want you to run third party software. It is close enough to the original that no passerby would notice it.
Finally, if you don’t like the name, just rename the executable in your Program Files directory and make a new shortcut. That should sort that problem. I like the name and it has some ‘brand’ recognition as it were. So I am keeping it.
Thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback. I appreciate it.
Tom
Thank you for Your response. You are right, later I discovered the “does not work” was in fact requiry for point at the excel. I was not there in personal, so I was just informed the program was baned for causing unability to open excel files. Unfortunately later one more problem occured. We use programs opening and commanding excel through ole automation (or some stuff like that). With launcher in the path something got bad and it did not work. Finally I had to move back to registry hacking. It works, so I am happy with that:
Delete the following keys in the registry (or rename):
HKCR\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\ddeexec
HKCR\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec
HKCR\Excel.CSV\shell\Open\ddeexec
delete first line of value (not the whole “command”!):
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.CSV\shell\Open\command\command
Thank You for Your time and have a nice day.
The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, however I really thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you possibly can repair should you werent too busy searching for attention.