Office 2003 - "close" button [X] closes all instances instead of o

[A. M. van Driel]

In Office 2003, when opening multiple documents in Word or Excel, multiple
instances of the same program appear on the task-bar, suggesting each
document is opened in its own instance. This behaviour - for me - implies
that when I press the big red "Close Cross" [X] of one of these windows, only
one instance and only one document should be closed. Instead of this (for me
to be expected) behaviour, Word and Excel try to close all windows.

This behaviour has made me loose data, because I answered "no" to all
questions "do you want to save data" of an unimportant document I THOUGHT I
was closing. In fact, these questions concerned the other documents that were
open. In my opinion, they were safe in their own instance of Excel, but when
I tried to find them later all documents were gone.

Anyone - is there a fix and to Microsoft Developers; do you think you may
fix this in future versions or even my current version of Microsoft Excel?

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi A.M.,

The Multiple Document Interface (MDI) has been in place
since Office 2000 for Excel and Office XP/2002 for
Word.

There is usually only one instance of the app open.
Although you can create a shortcut that will open
a separate instance of each app for each document it's
a bit memory intensive to do so.

Within the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) when more than
one document is open there is a separate X close icon
for each document below the [X} Windows one for the app itself.
You can use Tools=>Options=>General to turn off the Windows in
Taskbar setting to have only one icon per app and use
the 'Window' menu within the apps as in prior versions.

When you close the app and documents are open the [Yes][No]
dialog always displays the name of the file/document
that you are being asked to make a choice on.

In Windows XP you can choose the option to group icons
so that there is only one icon per app on the taskbar
that when selected will cascade to show the open documents.

========
In Office 2003, when opening multiple documents in Word or Excel, multiple
instances of the same program appear on the task-bar, suggesting each
document is opened in its own instance. This behaviour - for me - implies
that when I press the big red "Close Cross" [X] of one of these windows, only
one instance and only one document should be closed. Instead of this (for me
to be expected) behaviour, Word and Excel try to close all windows.

This behaviour has made me loose data, because I answered "no" to all
questions "do you want to save data" of an unimportant document I THOUGHT I
was closing. In fact, these questions concerned the other documents that were
open. In my opinion, they were safe in their own instance of Excel, but when
I tried to find them later all documents were gone.

Anyone - is there a fix and to Microsoft Developers; do you think you may
fix this in future versions or even my current version of Microsoft Excel?>>
--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Office 2003 Editions explained
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/editions.mspx