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Workbook Events in Excel

Written by Andy Brown

In this tutorial

Creating Workbook Events
The Main Workbook Events Available
Example: Preventing Printing on Tuesdays
Example: Displaying a Misleading Message when Adding a Worksheet

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.

Example: 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

Example: Displaying a 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

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An Introduction to Events in Excel VBA

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Worksheet Events in VBA

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Debugging

You can learn more about this topic on the following Wise Owl courses:

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Online tutorials

Tutorials on VBA

Events

Workbook Events in Excel

Creating Workbook Events

The Main Workbook Events Available

Example: Preventing Printing on Tuesdays

Example: Displaying a Misleading Message when Adding a Worksheet

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