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Want to do something when a user opens a workbook, or stop them clicking on a particular cell? You need to learn how to attach code to Excel workbook or worksheet events!
- Introduction to Handling Events in Excel VBA Code
- Workbook Events (this blog)
- Events for a Particular Worksheet
- Bypassing Macros
- Considerations for Other MS Office Application Events
This series of blogs is part of our Excel VBA online tutorial. If you want to learn more, have a look at our classroom-based courses in VBA macros and/or Excel.
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 November 2011
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Workbook Events
This page looks at some of the most common workbook events, with some examples of what you might do for them.
Creating Workbook Events
As a reminder, here's how to create a workbook event:
The steps to creating a workbook event are listed below.
The steps are:
- Double-click on ThisWorkbook for the file to which you want to attach code (or right-click on it and choose to view its code).
- Click on the drop arrow next to General, and choose Workbook (the only option in the list!).
- From the right-hand drop arrow, choose the event to which you want to attach code.
The Main Workbook Events Available
The most useful events available for a workbook are as follows:
| Event | Use |
|---|---|
| BeforeClose | Prevent closure of workbook if some condition isn't true |
| BeforePrint | Prevent printing if (eg) data hasn't been filled in |
| BeforeSave | Prevent a user saving incomplete workbooks |
| NewSheet | React to a user inserting a new worksheet |
| SheetCalculate | Run when a user presses F9 to calculate a worksheet |
The rest of this page contains some examples of macros that you might write - they are somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Preventing Printing on Tuesdays
The following amusing little macro will stop your colleague printing out your workbook on Tuesdays and display the following amusing (?) message:
The message you'll see when you try to print this workbook on a Tuesday.
Here's the code which would make this work (or rather, not work):
Private Sub Workbook_BeforePrint(Cancel As Boolean)
If Weekday(Date) = vbTuesday Then
'don't allow printing on Tuesdays
MsgBox "Sorry - the printer goes " & _
"to see its mother-in-law on Tuesdays"
Cancel = True
End If
End Sub
Displaying Misleading Message when Adding a Worksheet
You can't prevent a user adding a new sheet to a workbook, but you can react to what they've just done and undo it!
The sort of message you could display when someone adds a worksheet.
Here is some code to do this - note that it's up to you to guess that in this context Sh must refer to the worksheet you've just added!
Private Sub Workbook_NewSheet(ByVal Sh As Object)
'user has just inserted a worksheet - delete
'it quietly
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Sh.Delete
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
'explain why
MsgBox "Sorry - this workbook is full"
End Sub
Now that we've seen some events for workbooks, let's consider events at the worksheet level.