Excel® 2007 Bible

Chapter 43. Working with Excel Events

<feature><title>In This Chapter</title>

• Understanding events

• Using workbook-level events

• Working with worksheet events

• Using non-object events

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In the preceding chapters, you’ve seen some examples of VBA event-handler procedures. These procedures are the keys to making your Excel applications interactive. This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of Excel events and includes many examples that you can adapt to meet your own needs.

Understanding Events

Excel is capable of monitoring a wide variety of events and executing your VBA code when a particular event occurs. This chapter covers the following types of events.

• Workbook events: These occur for a particular workbook. Examples include Open (the workbook is opened or created), BeforeSave (the workbook is about to be saved), and NewSheet (a new sheet is added). VBA code for workbook events must be stored in the ThisWorkbook code module.

• Worksheet events: These occur for a particular worksheet. Examples include Change (a cell on the sheet is changed), SelectionChange (the cell pointer is moved), and Calculate (the worksheet is recalculated). VBA code for worksheet events must be stored in the code module for the worksheet (for example, the module named Sheet1).

• Events not associated with objects: The final category consists of two useful application-level events: OnTime and OnKey. These work differently from other events.

Entering event-handler VBA code

Every event-handler procedure ...