While this is not a file conversion issue, I thought you might find it interesting. I work a lot with Excel files and occasionally I need to open more than one file and compare them side by side. I have two monitors set up for when I have really big projects going and it’s a convenient way to manipulate the two files side by side.

The difficulty that I have run into is that Excel will not allow you to separate two open files so that you can view them on separate monitors. While you can compare them side by side on the same monitor, this is not always sufficient because you can’t manipulate the separate files or navigate them with ease. You also have a very narrowed view of each file.

Here is where Open Office once again comes to the rescue! What I simply do is open the one Excel file in Excel and the other in Open Office, and then drag one onto my second monitor, and viola! I have a perfect setup to independently manipulate the two files, having a full screen view of each. Given that Open Office Calc has the same functionality as Excel, this has so far proved to be the workable solution for working on two Excel files at the same time. And best of all, ofcourse, is the Open Office is completely free!

FYI, Word allows you the ability to separate two open files onto to separate monitors. For some reason Microsoft did not see fit to allow Excel to do this too!

I’ve discussed the usefulness of Open Office in my previous post Extracting slides from a Power Point presentation file.