Saved "Instances" of Excel

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Not really sure what you mean by "multiple instances". Is this same file name or different file names? Or, maybe you could explain/elaborate it more details.

Thanks
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

I will try.

At one time, everything opened from the same Multiple Document Interface could share information with other spreadsheets in that same frame.  Hence you could cut and paste cells or specific formats or values from cell to cell.  They all shared the same frame and settings.  If you opened another instance of Excel (i.e., in another MDI Frame), it would not know about the prior ones you opened in the first frame and if you were to cut and paste from a cell in that instance to one in another instance, you would be offered the option of pasting it as text without any formatting or other cell characteristics.  This confused users and Microsoft fixed it by defaulting Excel to share a single instance by default.

Now every time you open Excel by default it is all part of the same Excel Instance.  No more questions about why it allows me to paste all settings from one spreadsheet but not another.  

However, those of us who need to keep each Excel Instance separate (for example, if you are running a macro in one spreadsheet and want to report status in the status line, you probably don't want it overwriting the status of another macro running in another spreadsheet), still want to run multiple instances of Excel.  A fairly good description of the opening techniques available is here:

https://gorilla.bi/excel/open-multiple-instances-excel/

Each instance is independent and does not (or should not) interfere with another.  For example, I typically run scripts in 10 or more spreadsheets that monitor information from various sources.  If one of these scripts encounters a problem, it reports it in the status line.  If they were all part of the same Excel instance, every workbook would show the same status line error, making it useless to identify which script is encountering the problem.  Also, the scripts do have some global variables which would likely cause problems if two similar workbooks were running similar scripts in the same instance.

Hence, even though it uses significantly more memory, I open each Excel workbook that is performing these tasks in a separate Excel instance, as I explained, to isolate them from one another.  Groupy likewise refers to "instances" in its documentation, but based on your reply, it appears they consider each workbook as a separate instance even though Microsoft may consider them sometimes part of the same instance (if opened normally) or part of a separate instance (if opened using the technique described in the referenced page and elsewhere).

So given all of that, I think I know my answer, but it would save a lot of time and be far less error-prone if Groupy could recognize and open multiple instances of Excel and Word (probably not particularly useful for the other MS Office products) so that I could use Groupy to save 10 instances of Excel as a group and then open the 10 instances via Groupy rather than opening each individually using the Alt+Click method.

Task manager shows the workbooks opened by Groupy as all being part of the same instance of Excel.  If you have true multiple instances, there will be an equal number of Excel entries in Task Manager.

I hope this explains this to some extent.

Thanks.

Okay, it bit too complex for me. But, I have forward your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

If I am following, you would need to save each 'instance' individually.  Example:

https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/2021-07-19_12-00-26.mp4

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Thank you for your help.

I am quite familiar with how to start and run multiple Excel Instances.   I can start them all with a VBA Macro quite easily.

My issue is that when I have a group of Excel Instances (not with any open worksheet or with a blank workbook or with a specific workbook) and I save the group of Excel Instances via Groupy so I can restart the dozen instances in tabs rather than running a macro and having Groupy group them automatically, Groupy does not open the dozen instances.  It opens a single instance with 12 workbooks.

My macros at times open or spawn additional workbooks (within the parent instance) and if I leave automatic grouping on, there can be anywhere from 12 to 18 tabs created.  The number of tabs is not a problem but since the macros will often make the workbook invisible, the tabs pop open and closed and this can leave remnants of images on the screen because Groupy does not handle this well.  Hence, if I have to open and group them myself (rather than saving a group).  I have to turn automatic grouping on.  Run a VBA Macro to open the instances and then turn automatic grouping off.

What I would want to do is leave automatic grouping off and have Groupy open the 12 instances for me, but it does not want to do that (it opens one instance and 12 workbooks in that single instance).

Like I said  earlier, it appears there is no concept here of how Microsoft Office Instances work, so I doubt there is a solution to this problem other than me handling it via turn on automatic grouping/run VBA macro/turn off automatic grouping.

Thanks.

From this, you are wanting Groupy to do the exact opposite of what it was designed to do.  What would make more sense to me is if those 12 Excel instances (in your example) were also grouped with other things, not just them by themselves - that you would want Groupy to group each Excel instance with something else - otherwise, you script to open Excel 12 times (and only Excel) would suffice, no?

That said, I think I was able to get what you are looking for...  This edited groupy file will open new instances of Excel if repeatedly opened:

[Group]
GroupCount=1
GroupLeft=1693
GroupTop=377
GroupRight=3461
GroupBottom=1797
GroupMax=0
Locked=0
[GroupyEntry1]
OwnerProcess=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE
NewTabName=
RunElevated=0
Target=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\EXCEL.EXE
Commandline=/x
NoPatternMatching=0
MatchingClass=XLMAIN

https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/2021-07-22_10-26-56.mp4

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

From this, you are wanting Groupy to do the exact opposite of what it was designed to do.  What would make more sense to me is if those 12 Excel instances (in your example) were also grouped with other things, not just them by themselves - that you would want Groupy to group each Excel instance with something else - otherwise, you script to open Excel 12 times (and only Excel) would suffice, no?

Not sure how you got me wanting to have groupy do the opposite of its design.  I want all 12 instances in a group.  I want to save the group and restore the group.  Those seem to be what it is designed to do.  I am also running 12 python instances as a saved group and when I load the saved group, I have 12 instances of Python.

Are you saying that groupy was designed to open multiple instances of some products and not others?  It opens 12 IDLE instances when I load the saved group.  I saved the 12 Excel instances exactly the same way and when I load this saved group, it opens one Excel instance with 12 workbooks.

I realize there is no official documentation, but if it was designed to just work the way it works, I cannot argue that I want it to do something different, but everything I have read says it opens instances.  Perhaps you define an application "instance" differently for Microsoft products or consider an "instance" to be a file instance for those products rather than an application instance for those products.  In older releases of Excel, you did open multiple Excel instances (because that was the Microsoft default). Seriously, I am trying to load 12 empty Excel instances just like I load the 12 empty IDLE frames.  I don't see how this is asking for something different than what it is designed to do.

If I am wrong, you obviously have me there.  If it was designed to work inexplicitly, I agree it is wrong to ask for it to handle multiple instances the same way for each product and I agree I am asking for a design change to have it work consistently.  I apologize for asking you to change the design to work in a meaningful manner for Microsoft products.  That is like trying to hit a moving target.

Thank you for the suggested change.  I will try it out the next time I reboot the machine.

By the way, the only reason for turning automatic grouping off after the initial 12 instances are open is that the feature would include any additional spawned workbook files opened as part of the group.  That behavior in itself if fine and I could live with that (or even find it desirable).  However, your product leaves graphic vestiges on the screen within the group as these pop open and get immediately closed and these remnants that are left behind obscure important parts of other files in the group.  Thus, if I do not want to have any parts of the group obscured, I need to turn off grouping after the initial 12 application instances are loaded so that the additional temporary files opened and closed by the macros do not disrupt the group display.

The number of instances loaded is up to the application itself.

Groupy will launch say 12 copies of excel.exe  But Microsoft may have one launch and all the others detect the first one and pass open requests over to it.  This is a function of excel not groupy.

Now if you add the /x command line to excel it apparently will disable this logic in excel and open more.

In your case python and say notepad both work logically.  One launch = one instance.  Excel has some logic in your newer version to not do this hence the command line flag to force it otherwise.

However, I was reacting to the accusation that wanting the product to open multiple instances was contrary to its design.  Not sure about your other users, but that is the specific reason why I use and recommend this product.  I did not know it was not designed to do this.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge of Groupy and researching this for me.

This works.

Now, if you could fix the problem with the graphic vestiges, I would not have to have automatic grouping turned off when these run.