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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

I work for Microsoft as a UX prototyper. This is actually not only cool, but useful. I'll forward this around internally.

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Separate question;

Why can I have multiple documents open in any MS Office App, which allow me to show one document on one screen and another on a different screen -- EXCEPT Excel?

This drives me NUTS. I can't easily compare data between spreadsheets without stretching the app across both screens -- then manually adjusting each document window within excel.

Who the hell is responsible for these inconsistencies over there?

Right-Click on Excel Taskbar Icon > "Microsoft Excel" > A new window opens.

Still crazy that it doesn't do that by default, but there is a workaround.

Wow, that works. Jesus christ this has been a frustration for years.

Thanks

> Right-Click on Excel Taskbar Icon > "Microsoft Excel" > A new window opens.

Is that a windows 7 feature? It doesn't appear to work for XP. (Yeah yeah this desktop is in a govt dept that will get updated one day...)

Like the samstave this (mis)feature of Excel has been frustrating me forever.

Can't remember what the shortcut is (been on the mac bandwagon for 5 years) but it definitely works in XP as I was doing that for years. Maybe File > New Window or something like that.

Shift + left-click on the taskbar icon also opens a new instance of Excel.

Middle-click works as well

Awesome. Jesus I cant believe I never knew this....

Totally agree. I've spent tons of time pouring through their advanced settings and googling around for an answer to this. I must want to have 2 Excel windows open to compare values 10x more than any time I want to use their tiling features.

Actually, as noted in a sibling comment, you can open two excel documents. However, as far as I can tell, you absolutely cannot open two powerpoint documents side by side.

This is fixed in Office 2010. You can open up separate instances of PPT. In older versions you can, if you're feeling ambitious, set up a separate Windows user and create a shortcut that fires up ppt.exe under this new user's account (but still logged into your Windows account). This will give you two side by side PPT windows. Though copy-paste between these windows doesn't work, so it's a nearly worthless hack :)

This is one reason I like the Mac UI -- every document/file is its own window by default, so it's easy to put things side-by-side, even across monitors.

That is actually dependent on the application, but even when the default is tabs you can just drag the tab out to become a window.

You can open up another instance of Excel by going to Start > Run (or the Windows 7 equivalent) > "excel" and then opening up your document. Then you'll have two instances of Excel open each with their own window.

http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2011/03/how-to-make-exce...

I think it might look slightly better if the buttons were moved to be partly off-screen, something like this: http://i.imgur.com/8T26g.png

The way it's demonstrated on the website, there's no visual indication that the window is partially offscreen except for the lack of a rounded corner, which isn't noticeable at a glance. The exact offset would have to be played with a bit, but letting the buttons push slightly off the screen makes it immediately clear that part of the window isn't visible.

Another visual indication you lose either way is being able to judge how much of a window is off-screen. Normally, the title is perfectly centered all the time. You can look at how far the window extends to the right, and assume it does the same on the left. My minor edit to the buttons above doesn't help with this one.

All in all, I think it's giving relatively minor gains in exchange for removing visual information about the size of the window. The effect is similar to Apple's choice to hide scrollbars in 10.7 unless you're actively scrolling. Sometimes you can judge from the context that there's more available off the screen, and sometimes you can't. Is it worth the trade-off?

I like the idea of moving them slightly off the screen to show that your window is clearly off the screen... but it might be better to indent the buttons further into the screen so that the close button is still the same size.

I wouldn't be too worried about the size, unless you're speaking from a purely aesthetic perspective. For usability, being on the edge of the screen makes it an easy mouse target.

Fair point... I suppose I prefer a uniform hit area size on the buttons throughout the UI. I probably have a bit of OCD :P.

Please do so.

I also have this problem a lot (windows 7);

Ill have Chrome or Acrobat open on my second display when docked at work.

I sleep the machine, undock and head home. When I open it up, chrome or acrobat still maximizes to the now disconnnected second screen.

I have no way to get it back. FN+F8 for projector control does nothing. neither does resleep or hibernate. Closing chrome doesnt work because it re-opens in the same place as last time. Only a reboot fixes this problem.

I hate rebooting my machine. I go many weeks without rebooting and this always pisses me off.

It would be better if you could right-click an app on the task bar and say "send to primary screen" or "send to secondary screen"

there used to be this option, but only some-times, and I don't know why/where to find it.

you can use win+shift+left or win+shift+right so move windows across monitors.

it also works with win+left/right to move things to the left/right of one monitor and then again to jump across to another.

If you're not in Windows 7, you can also do this: Select the window with Alt-tab, press alt, up, left, M (not at the same time). Then use the arrow keys to move the window around as you choose.

It doesn't work with a Chrome window though, since it seems to override those options.

I think Alt-Space will open the "icon menu" on your current display and let you select "Move" with the mouse.

This is a great solution, thanks!

I have one app that always ends up off screen when I disconnect my external monitor and I could never find a definite way to get it back.

Perfect - Thanks! Ill try that.

It's been many years since I've used Windows, but that's one thing that always bugged me. In XP, you could (with the window in question in focus, using alt+tab if necessary) Alt+Space, M (move), then use the arrows to position the window where you'd like - no mouse needed.

Funny what we remember.

Could you get them to add a powertoy or something to add Linux's Alt-drag to move a window without needing to drag the titlebar? (Also to let me move a window offscreen if I want to?)

Actually, as long as I'm asking for features, can I get window shading?

For Alt-drag you want http://www.autohotkey.com/ and either this script:

http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/scripts/EasyWindowDrag_%28KDE...

Or one of the similar ones from: http://www.autohotkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Script_Listin...

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