For Windows Vista or 7 to open a new instance of Excel try:
You will need to make some new registry entries. Before you do this, I highly recommend you backup your registry. Changing the wrong thing in your registry can cause major issues with your computer. However if you follow these instructions you should
be fine. Just to clarify if you wreck your system I take no responsibility.
You need to open your Registry Editor
Click on the Start button ( windows Orb)
Directly above the circle button you will see a text box that says
"Search Programs and Files"
Inside this you need to type "regedit" without the double quotes, and press "ENTER"
Next you need to navigate to the following registry entry
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT => Excel.Sheet.8 => Shell => Open => Command
The (default) value will be something like this:
"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE" /e
And you'll want to append a "%1" to the end of that, making it:
"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1"
Next, you'll want to rename the command key, which is right below the (Default) key, to
command2 or something else.
Next you'll need to rename the DDE exec key here to DDEexec2 or something else:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT => Excel.Sheet.8 => Shell => Open => ddeexec
This will make the change for the Excel 97-2003 file type.
If you want to do the same thing for Excel 2007 files, you'll need to make the changes to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT => Excel.Sheet.12 key.