Dual Monitors on Notebooks Help 1

[Michael514]

Hi all,

I have a notebook that I use with an external monitor when I'm in my office. When I go on the road I only have the notebook screen. My problem is that in the office I have placed my Excel and Word to open on the external monitor. Now when I'm on the notebook only when I open these applications nothing appears on my screen. I only see the icon on my toolbar. If I switch the application to full screen it comes up alright, but of course I can not re-size a maximized book.

Does anyone know were in an ini file the last postions are located or how I can get the windows to open locally ?

Thanks

 

[franklin97355]

Where did you set it to open on the other monitor? Go there and change it back.

 

[vanvb]

I have seen this before on my own machine and I know it is a pain in the butt. Franklin, it likely got there by her dragging the window there when there were two windows...now it's tough to fix. Anyways, the window position is kept in the registry under:
HKEY_USERS\"Your SID"\Software\Microsoft\Office\"Your version Number"\Excel\Options.
There is a key there called pos. Mine is "22,29,768,530". That is around the middle of the main monitor working in a two monitor scenerio with both set at 1024x768. That should work for you. If you have problems with it maximizing back into your secondary monitor, let me know and I will get you the rest of the settings in the options area.

Hope that helps!

 

[Michael514]

Thanks Vanvb,

I'll try it tonight. Yes it's a very very big pain. How do users who have Dual screens at the office deal with issues on the road. The only solution seems to be to replace all open windows back to the laptop display before shutting down ....(What a pain).

 

[vanvb]

You don't have to do that...just change the display settings to turn off the secondary monitor before shutting down. That will take core of it for you.

Thanks for the star!

 

[jmd0252]

Do you use the laptop, in a docking station in the office. I use one every day, docked, with an external monitor, and it works fine. I might have to change the resolution, to be lower, working off of the notebook screen. But have never had to do what you describe.

 

[vanvb]

jmd0252,
What happens is that if the last location of a program happens to be on the secondary monitor and you just shut down your computer without turning off the seconday monitor, Windows sometimes gets confused and puts the program where it used to be which is off the screen. It doesn't always happen, but I have seen it before and that is what Michael514 is getting. Maybe with a docking station things are different because you no longer have the secondary vga port on your machine when you leave the office so windows knows that there is only one monitor...I don't know.

 

[jmd0252]

I do not have anything set monitor wise. I dock the laptop, have the external monitor hooked off the docking station, and it is a non issue. I will agree that you have to have the laptop feed the outisde connection. Example, mine is docked currently, I can open the top, and viola,,, I have 2 screens. I concur with you,, it has to be the docking station taking care of routing the signal.

 

[Michael514]

Thanks All,

Yes I believe that it is a docking station/non-docking station issue. The Notebook that the problem is on had the external monitor connected directly. We also have users with Docking Stations where this has not been an issue.

What a needed was an easy way for this not to happen again. And how to get the creens back to the main display