I remember back when I could just double click on an excel file and it would open in a new window. Now, in order to save time/resources/etc, everything opens in the same window.

Employee was having problems with opening excel files from outlook with the “Excel cannot complete this task with available resources” error. Microsoft didn’t help much. Google neither.

Last time I had an error that was similar was back with 2003 office and the user had opened the same named file a hundred times (not all at once) and that hundredth time it refused to open. Temporary files were created each time the file was opened named something like “tempfile01.xls” and then “tempfile02.xls” etc but after the tempfile99 it wouldn’t overwrite the first one. Deleting temp files fixed that issue. It did not, however, fix it with office 2010.

Workaround I got was to edit the registry to make each excel file open in a new application window.

MAKE SURE EXCEL IS FULLY CLOSED!!!
regedit
HKCR\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\open\command
Edit the default and add “%1” at the end – there should be spaces between all arguments
Rename the “command” key to “command2”
Rename the “ddeexec” container to “ddeexec2”

HKCR\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\open\command
Edit the default and add “%1” at the end – there should be spaces between all arguments
Rename the “command” key to “command2”
Rename the “ddeexec” container to “ddeexec2”

Close regedit
Open Excel
Open Excel again. Profit.