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Multiple Excel Windows

How to work with multiple excel windows at the same time including looking at 2 different spreadsheets or 2 sheets from the same workbook.

Multiple Excel Windows

In this example you have a fairly large spreadsheet, and what you’d like to do is be able to look at the top and the bottom of the spreadsheet at the same time i.e. multiple excel windows at the same time. You can do this by splitting the screen, and there are two ways to do this

  • either you click on the cell where you want the split to occur, lets say we want it to occur there,
  • we say Window,
  • and Split
  • and what will happen is the screen will be split,
  • if you double click on the split it will disappear,
  • and you can click somewhere else,
  • you say Window,
  • Split

And you’ll be given more sections. And what this allows you to do is view one section of spreadsheet while scrolling down to get to another section of the spreadsheet.

There is another way to do this as well,

  • so if we remove these by double clicking,
  • you’ll see that on the scroll bars here we have two little marks, you can click and drag it to where you want it to sit,
  • so we can click and drag this one here,

and set up your screens like that.

If you don’t like the split screen where both sections can be moved, it’s always possible to freeze a frame, so for example

  • you can move this up here
  • and we can say this section and this section we want to be frozen,
  • if you go to Window,
  • Freeze Panes
  • you’ll see it disappears
  • but now as you go down this always stays there,
  • as you go across this will always stay there,
  • in order to get rid of it, you just click Window,
  • Unfreeze Panes,
  • it will again be made available to you
  • and again you can just double click on it and it’ll disappear

Sometimes a situation may arise where you want to look at two different spreadsheets at the same time, for this you can use the Window Arrange feature. So for example you’ll see I’ve got two spreadsheets open,

  • if I click Arrange
  • you get the option of how to arrange it, in this case I click horizontal
  • and when you click Ok
  • you’ll see that the two spreadsheets are opened up neatly underneath each other

And you can now work through the one and quickly compare it to the other. Just to show you how the others look

  • if you click Arrange
  • and you say Vertical,
  • what it does it puts it side by side,
  • and go Arrange,
  • lets say Cascade
  • and they just rolling off each other,
  • and Tiled
  • what that would do is put them next to each other and underneath each other.

The last situation is where you actually want to view two different sheets in the same spreadsheet at the same time. So

  • we’ll close this one down
  • and open this one properly,

Now how do you view both sheets at the same time, again

  • if you go to Window,
  • you’ll see there’s an option called New Window, and when you click it
  • what it does is it actually generates the same spreadsheet twice. So now you’ve got this spreadsheet Version 1 and 2 and they are continuously linked. And now
  • when you say Arrange
  • you can go to Horizontal
  • say Ok,

The two same spreadsheets are there, except you can now on the one of them click on the other sheet, and it’s possible now to view both spreadsheets at the same time. And any changes you make to either one will be reflected in the one copy, and when you save it will be saved as one copy only.