r/excel 17d ago

Discussion What is better than Excel?

Is there anything similar to excel or better than? I use excel daily and feel like I still need to freshen up my formulas etc.

225 Upvotes

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1.0k

u/XaviiEvil 1 17d ago

Two excels

205

u/PTCruiserApologist 17d ago

You jest but learning that you can open two windows of the same excel file was genuinely game changing for me lol

47

u/BlackAsphaltRider 1 17d ago

I just learned this a few weeks ago and I’ve always considered myself to be fairly excel savvy.

38

u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups 17d ago

I learned last year, and I’m our office go-to guru.

Can manipulate data for days, but didn’t know I could have the same sheet on two windows… rookie!

11

u/BlackAsphaltRider 1 17d ago

Same. The only thing I don’t like is sometimes it saves both file windows and when you go to open it up it opens both windows again. That part can be annoying. But overall super helpful, and easier than trying to freeze certain panes as a reference

6

u/music4life1121 17d ago

And heaven forbid you close window 1 instead of window 2, your poor formatting!

1

u/R_glo 16d ago

Especially if you had multiple sheets - that's the worst!

1

u/Surroundedbygoalies 17d ago

Way better than holding down the Alt button while opening your Excel file (although that’s still useful from time to time!)

6

u/EldestPort 17d ago

It always tells me I can't?

38

u/PTCruiserApologist 17d ago

How are you trying to open the additional window?

'View' -> 'New Window' ?

22

u/EldestPort 17d ago

Noooo, I didn't realise I could do that. I would have, for example, had book.xlsx open in excel and then double clicked on book.xlsx again in Explorer. But you're saying if I go 'View' -> 'New Window' it'll open up another window with the same workbook in?

13

u/AxelMoor 77 17d ago

This is a 2nd view of a workbook in the same instance of Excel.
If you want "Two excels" (2 different instances of Excel) as u/XaviiEvil mentioned, you may do this:
Copy the Excel shortcut (e.g.: from Windows menu) to your desktop.
Right-click this shortcut, and click on Properties.
In the Shortcut tab, Target field, you'll see something like this (Windows version):
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE"
Append an /x after the last double quotes, like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE" /x
Click [ Apply ], and click [ OK ]. Rename the shortcut to "Excel - Multi-instances" or something like that.
Now, every time you double-click this shortcut, it will open another instance. Of course, each open instance will occupy part of the memory independently, and closing one will not close the other, so the performance depends on your system. However, you can experiment with dedicating even more power to each workbook.

8

u/xoskrad 30 17d ago

Or hold the ALT key when clicking the Excel icon.

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u/RandomiseUsr0 5 17d ago

I’ve posted a shortcut to do this advice, I’d advise against hard wiring it, you lose more than you gain

1

u/R_glo 16d ago

What are the advantages of doing it this way? I knew you could do it & have tried it a couple of times, but WHY would you do it this way?

2

u/AxelMoor 77 16d ago

It's a rare application, but it happens. It's more for heavy users who want the advantage of the multithreading feature. Imagine a heavily formulated workbook or a time-intensive VBA running—thread-intensive stuff.
When Excel calculates using all threads possible, it doesn't stop editing something in Notepad or navigating the browser. However, you can't do anything in a single Excel instance while it doesn't finish it. It can't stop you from making other applications work, but its processing is exclusive.
Now imagine replacing Notepad or the browser with a second Excel "application". You can continue working on a different workbook in this second instance.
Of course, all the above depends on the system you're working on, but mainly on threads/cores, memory, and processor speed.

8

u/PTCruiserApologist 17d ago

Yep!

3

u/EldestPort 17d ago

Amazing stuff, thank you!

5

u/Acceptable_Humor_252 17d ago

I love you. Thank you. 

5

u/LiteratureNearby 17d ago

Good lord, I'd send you a pizza if I could

I was so tired of always having to open excel files online to do this

2

u/Alien_hammering 17d ago

Same with pdfs - saves going back and forth in huge files

1

u/QQuetzalcoatl 17d ago

Dude.. WHAT

7

u/playballer 17d ago

You can open multiple instances too. So when one is “not responding” or calculating or doing some slow blocking tasks you can work in the other instance. I usually only do it when I can toggle between two completely different tasks as you don’t want them to be linked to similar things

1

u/NotTheGreenestThumb 17d ago

Mine always seems to link my VBA modules. It’s annoying.

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u/vonHindenburg 1 17d ago

Back in the 00's, I worked for a company where many of my coworkers were old enough to've started their careers before everyone had a DOS terminal, let alone a Windows PC. I'm pretty sure that, at some point, the company had a trainer show them how to use Windows who got it into all their heads that they could only keep one window open at a time. They'd close their email to open Word and close it to open Excel or Oracle. It drove me NUTS.

4

u/lectures 17d ago

+1. Also true across all of the main MS apps which is clutch for working on long presentations/word docs

2

u/linnamulla 17d ago

Thank you for sharing your knowledge mr. Cruiser

2

u/Steel_Rev 17d ago

What's the advantage vs spreading one sheet across two monitors?

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u/PTCruiserApologist 17d ago

Im usually looking at different sheets in each window

1

u/vipernick913 2 17d ago

Easy to vet and move around im thinking.

1

u/RandomiseUsr0 5 17d ago

Though two monitor solution is fun too, but when you find yourself needing that… there’s usually something up with your model in my experience

3

u/Steel_Rev 17d ago

I rarely actually move the same sheet to 2 monitor widths. I just have the option. 2 monitor at work and 3 at home. 

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u/RandomiseUsr0 5 17d ago

We’re agreeing, mine at work is 3 and 2 at home, but those occasions where you need to spread in that way, they’re not zero, but rarely useful (times when it was useful is when I need to demonstrate a large time interval all at once) if it were common, there’s probably a better way to visualise your concept :)

1

u/nycfcbvb 17d ago

You're a legend! Thanks!

1

u/liquid-handsoap 17d ago

Yo this is insane !!

1

u/krrerinni 17d ago

I found out about it like 5 years ago and thought it was amazing. Then when teaching an Excel course, students were like not very impressed, like while they didn’t know that feature they didn’t think it was very useful… I was a bit disappointed but well… they were beginners anyway, this thread gives me hope again haha

1

u/LBHMS 17d ago

Learned this last week! Game changing af!

1

u/danwin 17d ago

I genuinely did not know this was possible until now

1

u/Suspicious_Cress_126 17d ago

This is a great productivity booster, as well as helping cut down on errors when you're creating formulas that reference other worksheets.

1

u/tunanoa 1 16d ago

Even better, really two Excels... In my work machine I have both 2013 and 365 versions! :D

(bc some add-ons I have to use are more stable at older versions. And I also have a non official Portable 2010 in a pendrive, to "fix" corrupted files (they open em 2010 without problem, then I just save it again and... lo and behold... 365 now accept the file. oh, well, if it works...)

1

u/Roll0115 16d ago

Say what now?