Really Open in a New Window (5.0 and up)

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I recently bought a nice multimedia keyboard, two in fact (one at work, and one at home). It has a ton of keys, which I am able to set for various Intranet and Internet sites. Nice shortcuts. One problem. Every time I use one of my handy shortcut buttons, if I have an Internet Explorer window open already, it is ‘confiscated’, and I have to use the back button. Initially, I solved this issue by opening a new browser window, then hitting my button. This same problem occurs with links in email, such as notices from the lounge. I click a link to a thread I am active on, and boom, another page I have open is lost to the infamous back button.

Guess what?! I found a fix. Don’t know why I never knew this was there, it’s very simple, and I have no idea why it defaults to the value it does. Click Tools, then Internet Options, then go to the advanced tab. Now find the option with the text: “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”, and uncheck it. Now, whenever you click a link in an email, or use something like my shortcut buttons, it is going to open that link in a brand new window.

Isn’t that handy?

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I know exactly how you feel. I got smacked on this one too. Though I smacked myself!

I had a machine on our network that literally could not open a link in a new window. I did a LOT of troubleshooting on that, including a little utility I wrote that lets you see and move any window on your system, regardless of whether it’s hidden or not. That utility let me find out that the machine in question was opening a new Explorer window, but somehow it was hanging, because it wasn’t loading anything, and it hadn’t gotten past the point where it would turn itself visible. Anyhow, I scoured the KB on Opening in a New Window, and one of the articles explained about that setting.

Lo and behold, I turned that setting off on my machine, and suddenly what I had constantly put up with was now completely fixed. I have 3 monitors on my work machine, 2 at home, and I like to have lots of windows open, so it was a real pain when IE would take over a window I was using. The biggest pain is that it would take over the most recent window, not the oldest window. I may not have had a problem if it took over the oldest window.

Glad to share a useful tip.

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