Excel 2016 - One instance

Anonymous
2015-10-06T15:23:22+00:00

How can I configure Excel to open only one instance similar to 2010.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2015-10-06T19:07:25+00:00

Hello,

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Community.

Excel 2016 when opened opens only one instance. However, let us know if you are talking about the ability in Excel 2016 to open multiple spreadsheets in the same Excel 2016 window? If yes, then this feature is not available in Excel 2016 and was discontinued since Excel 2013.

I suggest you to take a moment and send us your views and feedback about Excel 2016.

Submit your feedback using the following link:

https://excel.uservoice.com/

Thank you for sharing your issue and requirement with us. We listen to all feedback and consider them for additional feature/future versions of our products. Your feedback helps us know which features are most important to you. We appreciate your continued interest in Microsoft products and services. Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products.

Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-28T13:07:52+00:00

    reh,

    For what is is worth?, I rec'd the following email yesterday (slightly edited)...

    '---

    Status update 03/27/2018

    An idea you support has been updated:

    498 supporters

    Accepting Votes 

    Restore MDI file handling (open all files in one window); Kill SDI (each spreadsheet opens in a separate window)

    Thanks for all of the votes – the team has definitely taken notice of the activity around this issue.

    We moved to SDI as a result of customer requests,

    but it looks like we’ve got work to do to really nail the use cases people care about.

    From a read over the comments, I see a number of cases that we will want to investigate further as we think through MDI vs SDI.

     We’ll get someone from the team to take a deeper look, and we may reach out to some of you for more clarification as we go.

    Thanks again for all the voting and passion here!

    John, Excel

    Excel Team [MSFT]

    Admin, Office.com 

    '---

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-03-28T14:46:40+00:00

    It makes no sense to me that they're looking into killing SDI to re-enable MDI. Obviously there are uses for both MDI and SDI. Multi-window is essential for maybe 10% of my own personal workflow; but i have the *choice with XL 2010 (alt+shift to launch separate instances). What underlying architecture in 2016 could possibly prevent allowing both SDI and MDI?

    Anyway i do appreciate the response (to my snarky comment). That is always worth quite a bit! :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-03-28T15:18:37+00:00

    I know I'm repeating others comments but with earlier versions of Excel like 2010 I worked in MDI with easy access to SDi if I needed it and I'm no olympic champion. Now we're stuck with car crash victime 2016. When I open the window I want , others come up all over the place, dozens of useless tool bars everywhere, and the worst thing is  WHY ARE THEY SO HUGE. The letters are half an inch high. I use a mouse to work , not boxing gloves. The designer needs to change there glasses or work somewhere where people ACTUALLY USE EXCEL. I loose so much time, there are dozens of extra clicks on every file every day. SDI is a real pain for word as well but I can work around it, I'm just loosing time, money and my mental health.MS don't need to develope anything, they just need to give me back Excel 2010.

    Thanks for the seance, how much do I owe you ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-04-12T20:32:20+00:00

    This is the absolute worst change - it has negatively impacted my ability to work.  Do the developers even use Excel and understand how those of us with data heavy careers use the tool they support? 

    I also have the issue now of Excel opening multiple, disconnected instances - which means not only does my personal macros only show up in one, but when I try to work across workbooks (vlookups typically) that is not possible, and I can't even align the workbooks horizontally as they're not connected.

    I had IT bring my old computer back that they had replaced for a different issue because Excel 2016 is such an inefficient tool that actually prevents me from doing my work in an efficient manner.  I'm dreading the day they force me to switch to Excel 2016

    • I will hold out as long as I possibly can.

    Please fix this Microsoft.

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