Dual monitors

[Travis]

I know this is a perennial topic of discussion around here, but is
running multiple instances of Excel (using up multiples of the amount
of system resources Excel normally would) still the only way to get
Excel to run in two separate screens?

I finally upgraded to Office 2007 Ultimate today, and am somewhat
disappointed that MS still hasn't gotten around to implementing
multiple monitor support. I'd thought they might have given some
comments I'd read in blogs on the issue that apparently dual monitors
were supported in the second beta version.

Is there some serious technical reason why MS hasn't added multi-
monitor support or was it just not something they felt inclined to add
to the feature list?

Travis

 

[David McRitchie]

I think this is more a matter of whether your hardware and
operating system support multiple screens with different views.

Windows Start, setup, control panel, display, settings, advanced,
somewhere after that you would see a tab that would
allow you to put one monitor to the left, above, right, below
the other. I don't have any such option on my system.

 

[Travis]

I think this is more a matter of whether your hardware and
operating system support multiple screens with different views.

Windows Start, setup, control panel, display, settings, advanced,
somewhere after that you would see a tab that would
allow you to put one monitor to the left, above, right, below
the other. I don't have any such option on my system.

I've already got my three monitors set up, all showing different
views. This problem is unique to Excel, its not about expanding my
desktop via the graphics display settings.

Excel 2007 doesn't seem to want to exist in more than one of them at a
time, unless I stretch Excel over multiple monitors. Stretching isn't
ideal because my central monitor has a different resolution to its
"wingmen" and if I've got Excel taking up the entire side screen its
only taking up two thirds of the central one.

A much better way would be if Excel behaved the way Word does. You
can drag a Word document onto any screen and all three screens can
have separate Word windows running and visible at the same time,
maximised to use all of the screen real estate.

With Excel all of your Excel windows need to be placed within the one
screen. If you drag workbook two over to a different monitor,
workbook one is taken there as well. You cannot have workbook one on
the left screen and workbook two on the right (or for that matter
something on the centre and something else on one or both of the
sides).

You can stretch onto two screens and then resize from there, but like
I said if your monitors are at different resolutions that's far from
optimal. A common registry hack that people do forces Excel to open
up a new instance of itself for every spreadsheet, but then Excel is
running multiple instances of itself and gobbling up a lot of system
resources.

Travis

 

[chip.pearson]

Travis,

You can certainly run Excel across multiple monitors. I have four
monitors and can have either one workbook spread out across all four
screens (columns A -> CB) or multiple windows within Excel, each
occupying one monitor.

First, you need to click the "window restore" button of the main Excel
window (this is the button between the "_" minimize button and the "X"
close button. When you click this, the main Excel window will become
sizable. Drag the main Excel window by the title bar to the upper-left
of your left-most monitor. Then, grab the lower-right corner of the
Excel window and drag it to the lower-right corner of the right-most
monitor. Next, click the Restore button for each workbook window to
make that window sizable and drag each workbook window into the
appropriate monitor.

See www.cpearson.com/excel/MultipleMonitors.aspx

Cordially,
Chip Pearson

 

[elwood]

While your solution might work well if all 2,3, or 4 screens have the
same vertical resolution, it still is a crutch at best.

Simply, because you spend way too much time dragging and resizing the
individual spreadsheets around in the big Excel window that spreads
over your screens. I have the same issue as Travis - i have a 24" in
the center, flanked by two 19" with lower resolutions (and I won't be
able to upgrade those to 24" for quite a while and I certainly will
not trade the 24" down to a 19"...).

A true solution, like in Word, where each document has its own
independent window, that can be quickly moved from one screen to the
other and will fill that screen perfectly by just clicking the
maximize button, still does not seem to be supported by Excel. So
until then, we are forced to deal with multiple instances of Excel
sucking away our resources.....