Can you interrupt the vba code to make a sheet selection? - vba

Question

I will try to be as clear as possible in the description, so here goes nothing:
I have created a code in which the user selects his excel file and then the macro copies the Sheet from that file into my macro Workbook.
MyFile = Application.GetOpenFilename()
Workbooks.Open (MyFile)
ActiveSheet.Copy After:=wbook.Sheets(1)
ActiveSheet.Name = "Selected file"
Workbooks.Open (MyFile)
ActiveWorkbook.Close SaveChanges:=False
This is working, but what I realized is, that there might be cases where the selected file has multiple Sheets.
Is there a way to write the macro in which if my selected file has 1 sheet it runs the above code and if it has more than one sheet to let me select the sheet I want and then run the rest of the code?

Answer 1

Edit:
I thought of another way to handle this — perhaps closer to what you were looking for . . .
It's just an expansion of the basic pause routine that I use occasionally.
This is my "regular" Pause routine (using the Timer function):
Sub Pause(seconds As Single)
Dim startTime As Single
startTime = Timer 'get current timer count
Do
DoEvents 'let Windows "catch up"
Loop Until Timer > startTime + seconds 'repeat until time's up
End Sub
...so, it gave me an idea.
Honestly, I was a little surprised to discover that this works, since it's basically running two sections of code simultaneously.
Code for WaitForUserActivity :
Here's the code I used in the demo above:
Option Explicit
Public isPaused As Boolean
Sub WaitForUserActivity() 'THE 'RUN DEMO' BUTTON runs this sub.
Dim origSheet As String
isPaused = True 'flag "pause mode" as "on"
origSheet = ActiveSheet.Name 'remember current worksheet name
MsgBox "This will 'pause' code execution until you" & vbLf & _
"click the 'Continue' button, or select a different a worksheet."
Application.StatusBar = "PAUSED: Click ""Continue"", or select a worksheet."
Do 'wait for button click or ws change
DoEvents 'yield execution so that the OS can process other events
Loop Until (Not isPaused) Or (ActiveSheet.Name <> origSheet)
If isPaused Then 'the active worksheet was changed
MsgBox "Worksheet '" & ActiveSheet.Name & "' was selected." _
& vbLf & vbLf & "Now the program can continue..."
Else 'the button was clicked
MsgBox "The 'Continue' button was clicked." _
& vbLf & vbLf & "Now the program can continue..."
End If
Application.StatusBar = "Ready"
End Sub
Sub btnContinue() 'THE 'CONTINUE' BUTTON runs this sub.
isPaused = False 'flag "pause mode" as "off"
End Sub
To run the demo:
place the above code in a regular module
make sure the workbook has at least two worksheets
create two command buttons:
one for the "Run Demo" button, assign macro: WaitForUserActivity
one for the "Continue" button, assign macro: btnContinue
click the "Run Demo" button
The key command in the code is the DoEvents Function, which "yields execution so that the operating system can process other events."
DoEvents passes control to the operating system. Control is returned after the operating system has finished processing the events in its queue and all keys in the SendKeys queue have been sent.
DoEvents is most useful for simple things like allowing a user to cancel a process after it has started, for example a search for a file. For long-running processes, yielding the processor is better accomplished by using a Timer or delegating the task to an ActiveX EXE component - and the operating system takes care of multitasking and time slicing.
Any time you temporarily yield the processor within an event procedure, make sure the procedure is not executed again from a different part of your code before the first call returns; this could cause unpredictable results.
Further details (and warnings) at the source.
Original Answer:
Some suggested solutions:
Instead of "stopping" the code you could prompt the user to specify which worksheet.
The easiest way would be with an InputBox where the user would enter an ID number or otherwise identify the worksheet.
More complicated but more robust and professional-looking would be a custom dialog box with the help of a userform. There are several examples and tutorials online such as this one.
You could "pause" execution to give the user a set amount of time to select a worksheet, with a simple timer loop, ad you could even check the worksheet name to see if the user picked a new one, something like this:
Dim startTime As Single, shtName As String
If ThisWorkbook.Worksheets.Count = 1 Then
MsgBox "There is only one worksheet in this workbook."
Else
shtName = ActiveSheet.Name 'get name of active sheet
MsgBox "You have 5 seconds to select a worksheet after clicking OK.", _
vbOKOnly + vbInformation, "Select a worksheet... fast!"
startTime = Timer
Do
DoEvents
Loop Until Timer > startTime + 5
'check if user picked a new worksheet
If ActiveSheet.Name = shtName Then
MsgBox "You didn't select a new worksheet!"
Else
MsgBox "Thanks for selecting a new worksheet!"
End If
End If
It's a little hoakey but could work, especially if proper checks to make sure you've got the correct worksheet now.
I suppose you could create an worksheet event procedure that would run when a worksheet is activated, and checked a global variable to see if your "import procedure" was running, and if so, resume your code... but that would be messy and confusing and would require the code to exist in the workbook you're "importing".
Or, better than any of those would be to programmatically/logically determine which worksheet you need based on the contents of the worksheet. Is there a title? A certain date? Maybe the newest worksheet? Something in a certain cell? There must be something that differentiates it from the others.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas towards a non-linear solution. 😉

Answer 2

As in whole, I would recommend ashleedawg's solution, but if you
insisted on maintaining your code structure, your code could look
something like this:
You can distinguish between amount of Sheets a Workbook has using .Count property of the Sheets object (or Worksheets if you do not want to include Charts) and use InputBox to check for the sheet you want to look for.
MyFile = Application.GetOpenFilename()
Workbooks.Open (MyFile)
If ThisWorkbook.Sheets.Count = 1 Then
ThisWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Copy After:=wbook.Sheets(1)
ThisWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Name = "Selected File"
Else
Dim checkfor As String
checkfor = InputBox("What Sheet should I execute the code for?")
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To ThisWorkbook.Sheets.Count
If Trim(LCase(checkfor)) = Trim(LCase(Sheets(i).Name))) Then
ThisWorkbook.Sheets(i).Copy After := wbook.Sheets(1)
ThisWorkbook.Sheets(i).Name = "Selected file"
End If
Next i
End If
Workbooks.Open (MyFile)
ActiveWorkbook.Close SaveChanges:=False
Might need some further tweaking, because I was unsure what exactly you wanted to achieve.