Specifying a range within a workbook without specifying the sheet - vba

If I want to refer to a range within the active workbook in Excel VBA, I can say "With Range("Myrange")". I don't need a sheet name.
Sometimes I want to refer to a range in another workbook. "With MyWorkbook.Range("Myrange")" doesn't work because I have to specify the sheet that the range is in.
Is there any way of referring to the range in a workbook without having to say which sheet the range is in?

If you create a named range and scope it to the Workbook you can use the following to get a named range in any workbook. You obviously get an error if the name can't be found.
wb.Names("Myrange").RefersToRange

Yes, create a Named Range (ex: MyRangeName) within your workbook. Then in your code use Range("MyRangeName") and it will refer to those cells on that sheet no matter what workbook you're looking at.

Related

VBA - When to specify ActiveWorkbook

When writing VBA code, if you know you're going to be operating in the same workbook and on a certain worksheet, should you specify ActiveWorkbook for the workbook objects in your code there?
Example:
ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("$A$1")
vs
Range("$A$1")
Above code assumes you are working off of Sheet1 through local macros(under Sheet1 object in VBA).
Better than using ActiveWorkbook in most situations is using WorkBooks("Book1") This is more specific and robust and I believe faster to execute than activating a workbook and then pointing to it when referencing ranges.
The VBA will default to the last active workbook if you do not designate one when using lines of code like Range("A1") So if you are working in just one workbook it is not necessary since the last active workbook should always be the workbook you want the code to execute in. I typically only designate sheets and ranges when I'm working in a single workbook since it is a little redundant to tell excel to select the active workbook when it already does by default in the absence of a specific workbook designation.
Just make sure that you will be running the macro from the open workbook that you want the code to execute in.
Including a workbook designation will never hurt and it will make your code more robust. But if you will only ever have the code execute in a single workbook it is not necessary.

Referencing multi-sheet named range in VBA

I have a named range in Excel that I am trying to clear using VBA.
The problem with the range is that spans across multiple sheets and I am not sure how to properly reference the named range in VBA since it covers multiple sheets.
The Named Range "Counts" is set to Workbook scope with the following cell references:
=Sheet1!$A$1, Sheet2!$A$1, Sheet3!$A$1
When clearing a named range where it only has cells referenced on one sheet I use the following:
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("Counts").ClearContents
I have tried the following but neither seemed to work.
ThisWorkbook.Range("Counts").ClearContents
and
Range("Counts").ClearContents
The last gives me a global error.
Instead of a range that goes across multiple sheets (which does not work, as we have established), you need a worksheet scoped range in each sheet.
When defining a range name you can set its scope to workbook or the current sheet. This way you can have the same range name in many sheets.
Use VBA to loop through all worksheet, access the ws.Range("TheRangeName") on the current sheet and clear its contents.
That's a cleaner approach.
I would write something that displays the names and you can use that to remove it...
In the immediate window:
For i = 1 to names.count:Debug.print i, Names(i).RefersTo, Names(i).name:next
You can then either use th name or the index to remove the particular name you want.
Hope that helps.
Rory Archibald states on his website post about named ranges that: A Range object can only refer to cells on one worksheet. You cannot refer to cells on different sheets with one Range object.
So I am unable to accomplish what I was wanting but I should be able to just create multiple named ranges and just clear them one at a time.
I was able to complete the code for this as follows with inspiration from teylyn
Public Sub ClearRanges()
'Checks if named Range exists on sheet if it does then clear contents
Dim ws As Worksheet
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
If Len(ws.Range("Counts").Name) <> 0 Then
ws.Range("Counts").ClearContents
End If
Next ws
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
End Sub

Reference an excel sheet from another workbook without copying the sheet

Im wondering if it's possible to reference an excel sheet from another work book without making a copy of that sheet?
The situation : I have some very large worksheets filled with various data, but i don't want to keep a copy of them open in my workbooks because while each workbook uses the same data source, they're slightly different.
I have a vba routine that takes this data and creates input files for other codes, vba expects this data to be available on the defined sheet names.
Is it possible to make either excel or vba to know that when i request worksheet("Example_1") it instead knows that i mean example_1 from a different workbook?
Thanks
Yes, it is possible.
You need to add those lines to your code:
Dim wkb As Excel.Workbook
Dim wks As Excel.Worksheet
Set wkb = Excel.Workbooks("name_of_workbook.xlsx")
Set wks = wkb.Worksheets("Example_1")
Now, every time you want to refer to a range from this other workbook, you need to add wks. before, i.e.:
'Printing value in cell.
wks.Range("A1") = "x"
'Selecting range.
call wks.Range(wks.Cells(1,1), wks.Cells(2,2)).Select
=SUM('C:\test\[test.xlsx]sheet_name'!A1:A25)
is an example of a formula which references sheet sheet_name in workbook C:\test\text.xlsx.
Note that when the other workbook is opened, the formula automatically changes to
=SUM([test.xlsx]sheet_name!A1:A25)
and then when it is closed, the formula will change back.

Vb.net Updating excel formula with references to other workbooks

I am trying to update some formulas from one workbook, to another workbook. Everything is working great until I run into a formula that has a reference to another workbook. For example a formula like this =IF(ISERROR(W!Var1),0,W!Var2) It will prompt me to open this workbook, I am assuming so that it can evaluate the formula. So my question is this. Is there a way for me to handle these situations on the fly, so if there is a workbook reference needed it will prompt me and then save it to memory? Because if I have more than one cell that contains these formulas it will prompt me to open the referenced workbook for every cell that contains the link. Alternatively, is there a way that I can just push my formula into the cell without having excel evaluate it?
So in my code I have this line which works for any value that doesn't contain a workbook reference. TheRange.RefersToRange.FormulaR1C1 = RangeFormula
Any help is greatly appreciated.
I understand that you refer to Worksheets (each of the "tabs" in a given Excel file), the Workbook is the whole file. The popping-up message appears when the referred Worksheet cannot be found. Example: range.Value = "=sheet5!A3" (in a Workbook having just "sheet1", "sheet2" and "sheet3"). If you want to avoid this message (although bear in mind that the Worksheet is not there and thus the calculations will be wrong anyway), you can write:
excelApp.DisplayAlerts = False
Where excelApp is the Excel.Application you are currently using.

Excel Copy Worksheet from external WorkBook

What I am doing is copying a sheet from a different workbook to my current workbook. I'm basically doing the following:
Delete the current Worksheet in the current Workbook
Open the external Workbook and Copy the Worksheet required
This all works as expected but all references in the other sheets are lost and replaced with #REF.
Is there a workaround (other than find and replace hack) that can be done to avoid this.
Regards,
Lloyd
You could try using Clear and Copy-Paste instead:
- Clear the contents of the current worksheet
- copy the external worksheet
- paste into the current sheet
Why don't you just copy the values contained in the sheet instead of the whole sheet object?
v = Workbooks("Book1").Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("A1:IV65536")
Workbooks("Book3").Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:IV65536") = v
where v is a Variant. Or,
Workbooks("Book3").Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:IV65536") = _
Workbooks("Book1").Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("A1:IV65536")
This takes a couple of seconds, but will be faster if you reduce the range to what you really need ("A1:IV65536" is presumably exaggerated...)
Of course this won't do if you also have formulas in the sheet you're copying and you need those formulas in the destination sheet. It isn't clear from your question what exactly you're trying to accomplish.