Have you ever wanted to open multiple PowerPoint or Excel windows, but found that they always open up within the one window?    Yes, you can look at two open files, but they’re always within the same window.

The problem is, Powerpoint and Excel limit one instance of the program to each logged-in user.   Here’s an inspired “bodge” to get around the limitation!

1) Create a new local user account, say “office”

2) Use the built in “runas” account to start the program as this new user:

runas /user:office “c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\powerpoint.exe”

You can do this with multiple usernames to create multiple instances!