If you’re wondering how to open an Excel tab in a new window this quick Microsoft Excel tutorial will help you.

Ever felt like toggling through tasks in Excel is as tricky as flipping through multiple tabs on a single browser window? It’s all smooth until you need to compare two sheets side by side—then it gets frustrating, fast.

Opening an Excel tab in a new window could solve that, but finding how can feel like a maze. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the simple steps to open a new Excel window so you can work on multiple sheets simultaneously without the back-and-forth sheet tab swapping.

Ready to unlock that productivity boost? Keep reading to make Excel multitasking easier!

Using the Move or Copy Command

First, open the source workbook from which you want to move a worksheet tab as a new window.

Now, open a new blank Excel workbook.

Go back to the source workbook and right-click on the worksheet tab you want to open in a different Excel instance.

Click on the Move or Copy option in the right-click context menu.

You should now see the Move or Copy dialog box.

Select the worksheet you want to move.

Click on the To book drop-down menu and select the new Excel workbook you created earlier.

Hit the OK button and Excel will move the selected sheet tab to the alternative Excel window. The moved sheet will automatically show up on the new window.

Simply repeat the above steps to move the worksheet back to its source workbook. This time, you need to move the sheet from the alternative window to the source workbook. So, carefully select the workbook on which you perform the move action.

Any work progress made on the shifted sheet tab won’t be transferred automatically to the source workbook until you move the worksheet back to its source.

A downside of this approach is it doesn’t respond to the Excel undo feature. So, merely pressing the Ctrl + Z hotkey for undo won’t move the sheet to the source workbook.

To view the remaining sheet in the source workbook and the moved sheet in the destination workbook side-by-side, press the Alt + W + A keys to launch the Arrange Windows dialog box.

Select Tiled and click OK.

The shifted tab will show up in the left window and the source workbook will show up on the right.

You should be able to use this method to open an Excel tab in a new window in most Excel desktop apps that run on Windows 10 and 11 PCs.

Using the New Window Command

If you’re using Excel 2013 or newer edition, the New Window tool is the best option to split a worksheet from the source workbook to a new yet temporary window.

When you disable the feature, the moved worksheet automatically shows up on the source worksheet along with edits you might have made.

Let me walk you through this cool technique with simple steps outlined below.

Navigate to the worksheet you want to split from the source workbook.

Go to the View tab, find the Window block, and click on the New Window command.

A replica of the selected spreadsheet will show up as a new Excel window.

You’ll see two instances of the same worksheet but in different windows. So, to work on two different spreadsheets side-by-side, you must select the other sheet in the source workbook.

Any changes you make in this instance will automatically be saved in the source workbook. To put it simply, the new window you see is simply a mirror of the selected worksheet.

You don’t need to save the new window separately. Simply, close it to go back to the original worksheet in the source workbook.

Using the Windows Task Manager

This is yet another quick and intuitive method to split a worksheet from an Excel file and show it as an independent window. If you’re using Excel in Windows 10 or newer operating systems, you can also try this out by following the intuitive steps outlined below.

Right-click on the currently open Excel window in the Taskbar.

Click on the Excel icon. A new Excel file will open. This workbook is temporary and hasn’t been saved yet.

Now, go back to the worksheet you want to move to a new window and click on the Arrange Windows command in the Window block of the View tab.

Choose Tiled in the Arrange Windows dialog and click OK.

You should now see the source and destination workbooks side-by-side.

Click on the sheet tab name you want to move and drag it onto the new workbook on the right.

Any changes you make on the other window won’t be saved automatically to the source workbook.

You must move the worksheet back to the source workbook and hit Save in the top-right corner of the Excel user interface.

If you’re working on a large and complicated Excel worksheet, I suggest you save the second workbook in the local storage as well. Otherwise, any unexpected power outage, system restart, or Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error might waste hours of work in the sheet you’ve split from the source Excel file.

Conclusions

So far, you’ve learned some neat techniques to open an Excel tab in a new window. You can choose any of these methods depending on your worksheet and working style. If you choose any other two than the New Window command-based technique, ensure you save the new Excel file separately.

Did the article help you learn a new Microsoft Excel skill today? You can share your reply by writing below. If you also know a better trick to achieve the same result, feel free to share it with me. I’ll be happy to include your suggestion to make this Excel tutorial even better for everyone.