Enabling multiple instances of Excel

I am sure you already have experienced the following situation: you need to open two Excel documents and try to place them side by side to compare the spreadsheets. Well, unfortunately, Excel does not allow multiple instances and opens all the files in the same window. After some research, I found out a solution to work around this issue and prepared some scripts for you to enable “Open in a new window” from the context menu (right-click on the file):

• Depending on the Excel version you have installed*, download this file for Excel 2007 or this one for Excel 2010 and execute it by confirming the security warnings.
• Should you want to make this behavior the default opening action, optionally execute this script.
• And finally, if you want to revert to the original settings, you can remove the enhancement with this script.

The reason Excel opens all the files in the same window is, amongst others, to avoid higher memory loads. However, not being able to compare spreadsheets side by side completely offsets this drawback for me. Now your Excel can behave like Word and PowerPoint. Enjoy!

* I suppose we all run 64bit versions of Windows 7. If not, I can provide you another version of my script (just leave a comment)