#206 Incompatibility with Excel and Powerpoint
Sorry if this has already been addressed and I just didn't find the thread.
I just downloaded VirtuaWin today and installed it on my work computer. I am using Office 2007 and running windows XP Pro service pack 3. I managed to disable the ctr - alt - arrow hotkeys and reassign them to act like Ubuntu on my laptop but I am having trouble with Excel and Powerpoint.
I like to put different projects on different desktops, the problem is that I need to have multiple excel and powerpoint windows open on different desktops at the same time. Excel seems to just be an aesthetic glitch, when I do the edit data function in powerpoint, every single open excel sheet is occasionally dragged to that desktop. The problem is not a big deal and has so far only happened twice. The main issue is powerpoint. It won't let me have two presentations open on two different desktops. It drags either the entire program over to the current desktop, or it puts a tab in the bottom bar that seems to indicate that the presentation I want is on the current desktop, but the presentation does not show up in the alt-tab menu, clicking on it does nothing, and the only way I can find the presentation again is to go to the alt-tab option for the main program on a different desktop and then use ctr-tab until the window opens.
I restarted my computer twice just to be sure and googled around a bit but can't seem to fix it.
Again, sorry if you are already aware of this, I really don't have the time to do an in depth search to see if there's a fix out there somewhere.
Excel and PowerPoint tend to use a single main window, only creating a new taskbar button when a new file is open - to show what I mean, try viewing two excel sheets or two powerpoint files side by side in two different windows - you can't, click on one file's taskbar button and the main window changes to show that file, click on another file and the main window changes to that one etc. never 2 windows.
As there is only one main window VW cannot support properly one file being shown on one desktop and another file shown on a different desktop - the main window can only belong to one desktop.
Can you please confirm that your version of Excel & PPoint are using one window.
If so the only question remaining is why does excel and powerpoint behave differently? I believe this is due to a default VW window rule for Excel which reduces the problems for it - if you open the VirtuaWin window menu for the main excel window (see VW Setup -> Help -> Window menu) you will probably see 'Edit window rule' option showing a window rule has been used and if you edit the rule you should see it matches window Class name 'XLMAIN' with the option 'Main window of multiple taskbar buttons' enabled. I doubt there is a similar rule for PPoint so if you create a similar one for it you may reduce the problems down to aesthetic glitches which is about as good as we can do!
No response for 6+ months, can only assume my initial comment was correct and resolved the issue or its no longer a problem. I did find that while you can have multiple ppt's open with each main PowerPoint editing program remaining independent (unlike excel) there can only be one slide show program (i.e. one used for pps) open which seems to stack pps going through them one at a time, so this can only be one all or one desktop and not one for each desktop as requested.
I also found that if you double click on two excel files at the same time you can sometimes get two independent excel windows but this seems to rely on a sluggish startup speed and once cached it can't be repeated - VW still works work with these two windows with the default rule.
Closing issue.