The Problem (Q-score 34, ranked #10th of 303 in the Excel VBA archive)
The scenario as originally posted in 2014
This bothers me for my whole IT life – I worked with 7 different versions of Excel over 20 years now, with big changes in each version, forcing me to search where the old features are hidden in the new version – but one single thing stays solid as a rock: the disability to open two files with the same name.
Sorry, Excel can’t open two workbooks with the same name at the same time.
So I’m really longing for an insight here, why this is still the case in Excel 2013, which was not even necessary to implement in Excel 95? Is there any technical or design reason within the Excel data structures or internal processings that it can’t handle two File objects with diffenrent paths but the same file name? I don’t want no Microsoft bashing here, I just want to understand the reason behind it.
Why this Range / Worksheet targeting trips people up
The question centers on reaching a specific cell, range, or workbook object. In Excel VBA, this is the #1 source of failures after activation events: every property (.Value, .Formula, .Address) behaves differently depending on whether the parent Workbook is explicit or implicit.
The Verified Solution — elite answer (top 10 %%) (+35)
Advisory answer — community consensus with reference links
Note: the verified answer below is a reference / advisory response rather than a copy-ready snippet.
Microsoft say here it’s due to calculation ambiguity with linked cells.
If you had a cell ='[Book1.xlsx]Sheet1′!$G$33 and you had two books
named ‘Book1’ open, there’s no way to tell which one you mean.
This way of referring to linked workbooks by name in cells persists through all versions, and I doubt very much it will change.
When to Use It — classic (2013–2016)
A top-10 Excel VBA pattern — why it still holds up
Ranks #10th of 303 in the Excel VBA archive. The only pattern ranked immediately above it is “T-SQL: Export to new Excel file” — compare both if you’re choosing between approaches.
What changed between 2014 and 2026
The answer is 12 years old. The Excel VBA object model has been stable across Office 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 365, and 2024/2026 LTSC, so the pattern still compiles. Changes that might affect you: 64-bit API declarations (use PtrSafe), blocked macros in downloaded files (Mark-of-the-Web), and the shift toward Office Scripts for web-first workflows.