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Excel VBA Tutorial Part 8 - Excel

l Objects
cel Functions ▾
What Are Excel Objects?

New Functions The term Excel Objects (collectively referred to as the

Excel Object Model) refers to the entities that make up an
New Functions Excel workbook, such as Worksheets, Rows, Columns, Cell
Ranges, and the Excel Workbook itself.

kup Tutorial
Each object in Excel has a number of Properties, which are
stored as a part of that object. For example, an Excel
Tutorial Worksheet's properties include the Worksheet's Name,
Protection, Visible Property, Scroll Area, etc. Therefore, if
ulas during the execution of a macro, we wanted to hide an Excel
worksheet, we could do this by accessing the Worksheet
ulas object, and altering the 'Visible' property.

in Excel Excel VBA has a special type of object, called a Collection.

As the name suggests, a Collection refers to a group (or
ks collection) of Excel objects. For example, the 'Rows'
collection is an object containing all the rows of a
xcel Errors Worksheet.

Accessing Excel Objects

plates
The main Excel Objects can all be accessed (directly or
os indirectly) from the 'Workbooks' object, which is a collection
of all the currently open Workbooks. Each 'Workbook' object
Tutorial contains the 'Sheets' object (consisting of all the Worksheets
and Chart sheets in the Workbook), and in turn, each
A Functions 'Worksheet' object contains a 'Rows' object (consisting of all
Rows in the Worksheet) and a 'Columns' object (consisting
vs 2007 of all Columns in the Worksheet), etc.

The following table lists some of the more commonly used

Excel objects. For a more comprehensive list of Excel VBA
objects, see the Microsoft Office Developer website.

Object Type Description

Application The current Excel

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Application.

Workbooks The Workbooks object is a

collection of all of the open
Excel Workbooks in the
current Excel Application.

An individual Workbook can

be extracted from the
Workbooks object by using
an individual Workbook index
number or name (i.e.
Workbooks(1) or
Workbooks("Book1")).

Workbook A Workbook object can be

accessed from the
Workbooks Collection by
using a Workbook index
number or a Workbook name
(e.g. Workbooks(1) or
Workbooks("Book1")). You
can also use
'ActiveWorkbook' to access
the current active Workbook.

From the Workbook object,

you can access the Sheets
object, which is a collection of
all the Sheets (Worksheets
and Chart Sheets) in the
Workbook, and you can also
access the Worksheets
object, which is a collection of
all the Worksheets in the
Workbook.

Sheets The Sheets object is a

collection of all the Sheets in
a Workbook. These Sheets
can be Worksheets or Charts.
An individual Sheet can be
extracted from the Sheets
object by using an individual
Sheet index number or name

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(i.e. Sheets(1) or
Sheets("Sheet1")).

Worksheets The WorkSheets object is a

collection of all the
WorkSheets in a Workbook
(i.e. all the Sheets, except the
Charts). An individual
Worksheet can be extracted
from the Worksheets object
by using an individual
Worksheet index number or
name (i.e. Worksheets(1) or
Worksheets("Wksheet1")).

Worksheet A Worksheet object can be

accessed from the Sheets or
the Worksheets object by
using a Sheet or Worksheet
index number or a Sheet or
Worksheet name (e.g.
Sheets(1), Worksheets(1),
Sheets("Sheet1") or
Worksheets("Wksheet1")).
You can also use
'ActiveSheet' to access the
current active Sheet.

From the Worksheet object,

you can access the Rows
and Columns objects, which
are collections of Range
objects relating to the Rows
and Columns of the
Worksheet. You can also
access an individual cell or
any Range of contiguous
cells on the Worksheet.

Rows The Rows object is a

collection of all the Rows of a
Worksheet. A Range object
consisting of an individual
Worksheet row can be
accessed by using an index
number (i.e. Rows(1))
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Columns The Columns object is a

collection of all the Columns
of a Worksheet. A Range
object consisting of an
individual Worksheet column
can be accessed by using an
index number (i.e.
Columns(1))

Range The Range object represents

any number of contiguous
cells on a Worksheet. This
can be just one cell or it can
be all the cells on the
Worksheet.

A range consisting of just one

cell can be returned from a
Worksheet, using the Cells
property (i.e.
Worksheet.Cells(1,1)).

Alternatively, a range can be

referenced by specifying
either a cell range or a start
and end cell (e.g.
Worksheet.Range("A1:B10")
OR Worksheet.Range("A1",
"B10") OR
Worksheet.Range(Cells(1,1),
Cells(10,2))).

Note that if the second cell

reference is omitted from the
Range (e.g.
Worksheet.Range("A1") OR
Worksheet.Range(Cells(1,1)),
this will return a range that
consists of only one cell.

The above table shows how you can access Excel objects
via 'parent' objects. For example, a range of cells may be
referenced by the expression:

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Workbooks("WB1").Worksheets("WS1").Range("A1:B10")

Assigning an Object to a Variable

Another point to note, when working with Excel objects is
that, when an object is being assigned to a variable in your
vba code, you must use the Set keyword as follows:

Dim DataWb As Workbook

Set DataWb = Workbooks("Data.xlsx")

The Active Object

At any one time, Excel will have an Active Workbook, which
is the workbook that is currently selected. Similarly, there will
be an Active Worksheet and an ActiveRange, etc.

The current Active Workbook or Sheet can be referred to, in

your vba code as ActiveWorkbook, or ActiveSheet, and the
current active range can be accessed by referring to
Selection.

If, in your VBA code, you refer to a worksheet, without

referring to a specific workbook, Excel defaults to the
current Active Workbook. Similarly, if you refer to a range,
without referring to a specific workbook or worksheet, Excel
defaults to the current Active Worksheet in the current
Active Workbook.

Therefore, if you wish to refer to range A1:B10 on the

currently Active Worksheet, within the currently Active
Workbook, you can simply type:

Range("A1:B10")

Changing the Current Active Object

If, during the execution of your code, you wish to change the
current Active Workbook, Worksheet, Range, etc, this can
be done using the 'Activate' or 'Select' methods as follows:

Workbooks("Book1.xlsm").Activate
Worksheets("Data").Select
Range("A1", "B10").Select

Object Methods such as the 'Activate' and 'Select' methods

used above, are discussed in more detail below.

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Object Properties
VBA objects have related Properties associated to them.
For example, the Workbook object has the properties
'Name', 'RevisionNumber', 'Sheets', and many more. These
properties can be accessed by referring to the object name
followed a dot and then the property name. For example,
the name of the current active Workbook can be accessed
by referring to ActiveWorkbook.Name. Therefore, to assign
the current active Workbook name to the variable wbName,
we could use the following code:

Dim wbName As String

wbName = ActiveWorkbook.Name

We previously illustrated how the Workbook object can be

used to access a Worksheet using the command:

Workbooks("WB1").Worksheets("WS1")

This is because the Worksheets collection is a property of

the Workbook object.

Some object properties are read-only, meaning that you

cannot change their values. However, you can change the
value of some object properties. For example, if you wanted
to change the name of the current active sheet to "my
worksheet", this could be done by simply assigning the
name "my worksheet" to the active sheet's 'Name' property,
as follows:

ActiveSheet.Name = "my worksheet"

Object Methods
VBA objects also have Methods that perform specific
actions. Object methods are procedures that are associated
to a specific object type. For example, the Workbook object
has the methods 'Activate', 'Close', 'Save', and many more.

An Object Method can be called by referring to the object

name followed a dot and then the method name. For
example, the current active Workbook can be saved using
the code:

ActiveWorkbook.Save

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Like any other procedures, methods can have arguments

that are supplied when the method is called. For example,
the Workbook 'Close' method has three optional arguments
which are used to provide information to the method such
whether the Workbook is to be saved before closing, etc.

The method arguments are supplied to the method by

following the call to the method with the argument values,
separated by commas. For example, if you wanted to save
the current active workbook as a .csv file called "Book2",
you would call the Workbook SaveAs method with the
Filename argument set to "Book2" and the FileFormat
argument set to xlCSV:

ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs "Book2", xlCSV

To make your code more readable, you can use named

arguments when calling a method. In this case, you type the
argument name followed by the assignment operator := and
then the value. Therefore, the above call to the Workbook
SaveAs method could be written as:

ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:="Book2",
[FileFormat]:=xlCSV

A list of Excel objects, with their properties and methods are

provided in the Object Browser within the Visual Basic
Editor. To display this, simply press F2 from within the Visual
Basic Editor.

Examples
Example 1
The following VBA code snippet was previously used to
illustrate the use of the For Each loop. It is now useful to re-
visit this code to examine the references to the Worksheets
object (taken from the current active Workbook by default),
and the reference to each individual Worksheet. Note that
the Worksheet 'Name' property is accessed, to display the
name of each Worksheet.

' Cycle through each Worksheet in the current Workbook

' and display the Worksheet name in a message box

Dim wSheet As Worksheet

For Each wSheet in Worksheets

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MsgBox "Found Worksheet: " & wSheet.Name

Next wSheet

Example 2
The following VBA code illustrates how you can access
Worksheets and Ranges in different Workbooks. It also
illustrates how the current Excel Objects are accessed by
default if no specific object is referenced. This example also
illustrates the use of the Set keyword to assign an Excel
object to a variable.

This example also shows the PasteSpecial method being

called for the Range object. This method sets the 'Paste'
argument to the value 'xlPasteValues'.

' Copy a range of cells from Sheet1 of another Workbook (named

"Data.xlsx"),
' and paste the values into the "Results" Worksheet of the current
Workbook
' (named "CurrWb.xlsm")

Dim dataWb As Workbook

Set DataWb = Workbooks.Open("C:\Data")

' Note that DataWb is the current Active Workbook.

' Therefore the following accesses the 'Sheets' Object in DataWb.

Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:B10").Copy

' Paste the values from the copied Range into the "Results"
Worksheet of
' the current Workbook. Note that, as CurrWb is not the current
Active
' Workbook, we need to specify this Workbook.

Workbooks("CurrWb").Sheets("Results").Range("A1").PasteSpecial
Paste:=xlPasteValues

Example 3
The following VBA code shows how the Columns
(collection) object can be accessed from the Worksheet
object. It is also seen that, when a cell or cell range on the
current active Worksheet is accessed, the reference to the
Worksheet can be omitted. Again the code provides an
example of the Set keyword, which is used to assign a
Range object to the variable 'Col'.
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This code also includes an example of how to access and

change the Range object's Value property.

' Loop through the values in Column A of the Worksheet

"Sheet2",
' perform arithmetic operations on each value, and write the
result into
' Column A of the current Active Worksheet ("Sheet1")

Dim i As Integer
Dim Col As Range
Dim dVal As Double

' Set the variable 'Col' to be Column A of Sheet 2

Set Col = Sheets("Sheet2").Columns("A")

i=1

' Loop through each cell of the column 'Col' until

' a blank cell is encountered

Do Until IsEmpty(Col.Cells(i))

' Apply arithmetic operations to the value of the current cell

dVal = Col.Cells(i).Value * 3 - 1

' The command below copies the result into Column A

' of the current Active Worksheet - no need to specify
' the Worksheet name as it is the active Worksheet.

Cells(i, 1).Value = dVal

i=i+1
Loop

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