Just installed Excel 2007 at work - doesn't close all windows

Participant · 9 Dec 2009 at 17:01

Hello

With Excel 2003, if I had several workbooks open and wanted to easily close them all at once, I would click the 'X' in the top right hand corner and one by one, each workbook would close itself and ask me if I wanted to save changes.

Now, in Excel 2007, clicking the top right 'X' has exactly the same effect as clicking the 'x' below it for the individual window, i.e. it only closes the workbook in focus rather than all open workbooks.

Googled to no avail. Nature of my job is several books open at once so would appreciate a solution to this.

Thanks.

csmager · 9 Dec 2009 at 20:03

Each to their own I suppose. To me, that's one of the most annoying things about Excel 2003. It only opened one session, which means you have to remember to manually open another instance in order to have two sheets on dual monitors, for example. And multiple instances broke most of the copy/paste functionality too. Single instance also causes me a headache as when one workbook crashes, it brings the rest down with it. I can't wait till they finally upgrade our work laptops.

Excel 2007 now does what it should do and opens each workbook in a new instance, just has Word has done for ages.

Don't think there's anyway of reverting to the functionality you describe.

csmager · 9 Dec 2009 at 20:11

I tell a lie - hold shift when clicking the 'X'. And just playing with it, it seems that they still all open in the same window. Ah well, Excel 2007 isn't going to solve all my problems at work!

Participant · 10 Dec 2009 at 11:22

Tried shift-X, no luck. On mine they each open in separate instances even if shift-clicked and opened as one. Must be something to do with the open and new command lines in file options. Had to fiddle with them to get them to open an excel file by double-clicking, otherwise it took ages.

Thanks anyway, will get cracking on the groups.

Tomsk · 10 Dec 2009 at 18:40

Excel Options - > Advanced -> Show all windows in the Taskbar

bledd · 11 Dec 2009 at 09:20

Closing multiple unsaved Excel 2007 files in Windows 7 is a pain

Participant · 15 Dec 2009 at 15:14

csmager said:
Each to their own I suppose. To me, that's one of the most annoying things about Excel 2003. It only opened one session, which means you have to remember to manually open another instance in order to have two sheets on dual monitors, for example. And multiple instances broke most of the copy/paste functionality too. Single instance also causes me a headache as when one workbook crashes, it brings the rest down with it. I can't wait till they finally upgrade our work laptops.

Excel 2007 now does what it should do and opens each workbook in a new instance, just has Word has done for ages.

Don't think there's anyway of reverting to the functionality you describe.

You obviously don't use VLOOKUP etc. then. VLOOKUP won't work between different sessions of Excel, neither will paste values. [Referring to quote in bold] Exactly, it borks copy / paste, which is part of the reason I don't want multiple instances. Haven't you just discredited your own comment about multiple instances being a good thing?

The only way to do it seems to be to go into Excel 2007 first, and load each file from there. I want it like Excel 2003 whereby I can go into Windows Explorer and shift click loads of spreadsheets and have them all there in the same session.

Tomsk said:
Excel Options - > Advanced -> Show all windows in the Taskbar

Nope. All windows are already displayed in the taskbar. Not sure why you thought this was the problem?

csmager · 15 Dec 2009 at 15:17

Robbie G said:
Haven't you just discredited your own comment about multiple instances being a good thing?

I have - hence the second post saying I see I was wrong about Excel 2007. I thought they'd changed it to multiple instances and fixed all those problems you mentioned! Sadly it seems not... they just stopped the close button closing all without holding shift. Would be nice, though!

The only way to do it seems to be to go into Excel 2007 first, and load each file from there. I want it like Excel 2003 whereby I can go into Windows Explorer and shift click loads of spreadsheets and have them all there in the same session.

It sounds like you've created this problem by changing how excel opens files on double-click - as your problem is not default behaviour.

Participant · 15 Dec 2009 at 16:19

On the shift-click thing...I just tried that again and this time it closed all instances of Excel. So that's one problem solved. Not sure what happened the first time, unless that functionality was added in a service pack as at the time I didn't have Office 2007 SP1 or SP2.

Now I was hoping that the SPs (that weren't initially showing up in Windows Update for some reason) would fix the multiple instances problem, but no.

So either:
- it's because I messed with the opening parameters (will go and look at this now, maybe try resetting them to default)
- or that's just how it is, live with it.

Anyway thanks for the help.

Tomsk · 16 Dec 2009 at 08:15

Robbie G said:
Nope. All windows are already displayed in the taskbar. Not sure why you thought this was the problem?

Did you uncheck it? Works for me.

[edit]
I'll elaborate.
When it's checked each file opens in it's own application window and they have to be closed independantly.
When it's unchecked, each filke opens as a sub-window in a single Excel application window.