New, separate window in PowerPoint

Question

I'm trying to open two PowerPoint 2007 documents, and they are open, but they're STUCK in the same window. I can't look at both presentations simultaneously, which is what I want to do. I want to open each presentation in ITS OWN, SEPARATE WINDOW, like in MS-Word how you can have two documents open and they'd be in two separate, draggable windows. I want OUT of the MDI and just have two completely separate windows!

How?

Answer 1

With Sandboxie you can run multiple instances of pretty much any program and indeed MS Powerpoint. Of course there's much more to Sandboxie than that :)

When Sandboxie is installed, simply right-click on the Powerpoint executable (POWERPNT.EXE) or a shortcut you have created. it will not work with the default MS Office shortcuts! (the reason for that is probably related to this question i posted a few weeks ago) and select Run sandboxed, this will start Powerpoint inside the sandbox (virtualized).

Here's a screenshot with 3 sandboxed Powerpoint 2003 sessions (it will most certainly work with with PPT 07), you can see the titlebar # # indicating that a program is running sandboxed, the top window was started normally.

Note: if you make changes and want to save a document inside a sandbox, make sure to recover the document before deleting the sandbox (or save the file at a location wich is listed for Quick Recovery in the sandbox settings and you will be prompted for recovery immediately).

With the registered version, you can create multiple sandboxes (only 1 with the unregistered version), if you need more than 2 instances.

As a neat bonus, Sandboxie will greatly add to your security when you run the web browser inside a sandbox. benefits of the registered version: force programs to run inside the sandbox, create multiple sandboxes, you may install sandbox on as many computers as you own with a single license.

Note: Sandboxie is not available for Windows 64-bit.

Answer 2

Can't really be done... BUT! There is sort of a workaround.

Using this option, you can view the presentations side-by-side within PowerPoint. I know, not exactly what you were looking for, but hopefully will let you get your work done a little easier.

Answer 3

Powerpoint 2007 does not open in separate instances normally, but here is a work around if it is really important to you.

You first need to create another account (with password) on the computer and log into it just so that it is fully created. After that you just log out of it. You won’t need to log into it again.

Then you need to go to start > run > and type in: runas /user:otheraccountname "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\POWERPNT.EXE" the user:otheraccountname will be user:XXXX whatever the other account it named.

A dos window will pop up and ask for the password. Input it. It will not show any letters typed so make sure it is easy to type.

Then another instance of the program will open up on your screen. This one you can move to the other monitor. When you save the file it will default to the “other account” as default -- just choose the “main” user account and location or … change the default save location in the advanced properties of that instance of ppt.

I hope that this is easy enough.

If you want to make it easy to do this you can create a “batch” file that you can put on the desktop that can be clicked to automatically open this. This is done in “notepad” Code as follows:

cmd.exe /c runas /user:otheraccountname "c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\POWERPNT.EXE"

then save this as “whatever you want.bat” to the desktop.

Now you can just click that and it will open the other instance.