Forum Discussion

BoBoSlacke's avatar
BoBoSlacke
Copper Contributor
Jan 19, 2021

Switch Workbooks functions

I just bought a laptop computer and am running six Office 365 Excel Workbooks that are connected to each other.  On my desktop computer I can switch between the workbooks by using 'ctrl-tab' and they show up in sequence, but on my laptop I can only switch between two of them at a time.  I created a macro with the 'ctrl-tab' and assigned a shortcut key 'ctrl-w' to run it from my Personal.xlbs, but with the same result on the laptop.  It works just fine on the desktop computer.  Please, let me know how I can get it to function the same on both units.

 

Desktop Intel Core i7-2600s, 8 GB, 512 SSD, 1.5 TB HDD

Laptop Intel Core i5-1035G1, 12 GB, 512 SSD

excel
Formulas and Functions
office 365

4 Replies

  • davheili's avatar
    davheili
    Brass Contributor
    Jan 19, 2021

    BoBoSlacke 

    I suspect that you may have been using a very old version Excel.  With your new PC, you also upgraded to a new version of Excel. 
    Here's a description of Ctrl-Tab
    Ctrl+Tab : Switch to the next child window of a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) program

    Your description lines up perfectly with the MDI interface.  MDI was removed from Excel quite a while ago in favor of SDI interface.  As a result, Ctrl-Tab won't keep flipping thru any more.  

    As a workaround, you may need to use Alt-Tab, which will tab thru all open apps.  

    • BoBoSlacke's avatar
      BoBoSlacke
      Copper Contributor
      Jan 19, 2021

      davheili 

      Thank you for that answer, but it looks like a step backwards.  I am subscribing to Office 365 on a yearly basis and assumed that they gave me the latest versions of Excel and Word on all my covered computers.  I will try the Alt-tab instead, but that will step through all my open programs and workbooks, so I might encounter email, Google and other open tasks.  I am running two screens and do normally have several tasks going on at the same time.    

      • davheili's avatar
        davheili
        Brass Contributor
        Jan 19, 2021

        BoBoSlacke 

        If your old PC had O365, then I don't really have an explanation.  I believe the last version of Excel that had supported MDI was 2007, which pre-dates O365.  
        Here's a link to an Excel UserVoice forum discussing the elimination of MDI.  You can see that Ctrl-Tab is mentioned in the suggestion.  
        https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/11706627-restore-mdi-file-handling-open-all-files-in-one-w 

Resources