Ignoring Other Applications

Normally, Excel works very well with other applications on your system—it is designed to do that. However, you may not want Excel to share information with other applications, for whatever reason. (Perhaps another application is interfering with the way you expect Excel to work.) If this is the case, then you may want to try this step if you are using a version of Excel prior to Excel 2007:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Excel displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the General tab is displayed. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Select the Ignore Other Applications check box.
4. Click OK.

If you are using Excel 2007, then you must follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Excel Options. Excel displays the Excel Options dialog box.
2. Click Advanced at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Scroll through the options until you can see the General group. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. Make sure the Ignore Other Applications That Use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) check box is not selected.
5. Click OK.

With the check box selected, Excel won't share DDE information with other applications. (DDE is an acronym for Dynamic Data Exchange, and is the common basis for the way that many applications access the same data.) If you change the setting of the Ignore Other Applications check box, make sure you pay close attention to Excel's behavior—turning off the sharing can have unwanted consequences on the way you use Excel or other programs. Changing the setting won't affect the validity of the answers provided by Excel, it just changes the way that Excel works within the Windows environment.