Need two Excel windows side by side, on different monitors, in the same instance

I'm assuming you're extending your desktop onto both monitors?

Once you've done that, make sure Excel is NOT maximized and manually resize the Excel program window using the corner resizing anchors to cover both screens.

Then you can open both spreadsheets and go to View>>View Side by Side.

On Mac: >> Window >> Arrange All >> arrange vertically.


I have the same problem but I found this and it works great!

When you open multiple Microsoft Word documents, you are able to put one on your main monitor and one on your secondary monitor to compare, copy and paste from one document to another. However, if you open multiple spreadsheets from Excel, you can't do the same thing! This has annoyed me since 2007 when Microsoft introduced the functionality in Word but not in Excel.

Well, I found a way around it. Here is how.

  1. Open your first Excel spreadsheet. Place it on the monitor you wish to work with it.
  2. DO NOT open the second spreadsheet with the Excel program that is open. Instead, go to your Start Menu and open Excel from there. Then do a File >> Open and open your second spreadsheet.
  3. Place the second spreadsheet on the monitor you wish to view the spreadsheet.

As far as I can tell, since you're opening a second instance of Excel, you can place it wherever you wish.


There's a New Window feature in tab View, but it still opens in the same parent window, because Excel is an MDI application. So you'll still need to resize the parent window to cover both screens

excel new window


Update

This seems to be fixed in Excel 2013, which changed to SDI only

  • Opening workbooks by running separate instances of excel
  • Other View Options

excel 2013 new window


A coworker of mine accomplished this by using a piece of software called UltraMon. Instead of dragging the Excel application window across both desktops (which I agree, is annoying), you can right click the application in your taskbar and click "Maximize to Desktop."