excel skips to another workbook for no apparent reason

I can tell you now, this will not fox the problem. I have been running excel in different memory spaces for years and still get this problem. 

It may work if you keep every excel sheet in its own instance of excel. The moment you open up two sheets in the same memory space the problem comes back.

<snip>

First, close excel and make sure all "EXCEL.exe" processes are closed in the task manager.

Type "run" (without quotes) in your windows search bar

Within "Open Field", type "excel /x" (without quotes).

-This will launch EXCEL in a separate instance, and from here please open the excel file you would like to use.

-Use this process again to open up your secondary or any additional workbooks.

</snip

We're trying this now. Note that a simple registry change can make this the default way of opening Excel, rather than using the complex steps above. See this article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3165211/how-to-force-excel-to-open-in-a-new-instance-by-default

If this indeed fixes the problem, then shame on Microsoft for not addressing it yet.

Try the workaround I posted on page 8. Hope this helps.

Thanks for this suggestion, which we will try.

In the meantime, following up another forum suggestion, we have disabled the Intel service "ESIF Upper Framework Service" and this also seems to have stopped the problem. I am not happy about randomly stopping system services, which presumably are there for some useful purpose, but thus far after a couple of days we have not been seeing this problem. I'll post a follow up if more information becomes relevant.

UPDATE 3/25/2018: Despite a brief period of no problems, which I have trouble explaining, the ESIF service removal turned out not to be a cure. So we've turned it back on and are trying the 'separate instance' solution. See the note below about a registry change that makes separate instances the default.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3165211/how-to-force-excel-to-open-in-a-new-instance-by-default

Hi everyone,

I work in technical support at my company and have been working with a client over several months with this exact same issue (We've already tried collecting logs, process monitor, disabling antivirus and third party software, reinstalling software, etc).

I stumbled upon this post, hoping to find a resolution, but like everyone else, saw Microsoft had no response. The good news is that I may have found a workaround!!

My user explained that the issue does not occur on Excel 2010, only  Excel 2016 with the same worksheets. We believe the issue is related to EXCEL 2016 (and maybe Excel 2013) opening all workbooks under the same EXCEL.EXE instance (in other words, multiple excel.exe processes running when more than one excel file is open), which may cause issues with other 3rd party add-ins. 

Solution - open Excel files in separate instances using these steps:

1) First, close excel and make sure all "EXCEL.exe" processes are closed in the task manager.

2) Type "run" (without quotes) in your windows search bar (Bottom left menu, windows icon)

3) Within "Open Field", type "excel /x" (without quotes).

-This will launch EXCEL in a separate instance, and from here please open the excel file you would like to use.

-Use this process again to open up your secondary or any additional workbooks.

- The reason for doing it this way is because opening more than one Excel file from the desktop on Excel 2016 will open them up all within the same EXCEL.EXE instance (check Task Manager).

- Using the 'run', and 'excel /x' switch will open up each workbook in it's own EXCEL.EXE instance (check Task Manager for multiple EXCEL.EXE processes)

So far this has worked well. 

Hope this helps :-)

Jon

TLDR: Follow steps on this link to achieve the same result above:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3165211/how-to-force-excel-to-open-in-a-new-instance-by-default