Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Get Excel Objects

In Excel, you always get one object from another, and everything starts with the Application object. So, if you want to change the font of cell C2 to bold, you would simply type:

    Application.ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Range("C2").Font.Bold = True

Not really! Application, ActiveWorkbook, and ActiveSheet are all global members in Excel, so you can shorten your code to:

    ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Range("C2").Font.Bold = True

or:

    ActiveSheet.Range("C2").Font.Bold = True

or more likely:

    Range("C2").Font.Bold = True

Each of the members in the original line of code returns an object reference that navigates from the top-level object (the Excel Application object) to the low-level object (a Font object) for which you want to set the Bold property. The order of objects looks like this:

Application → Workbook → Worksheet → Range → Font (set Bold property)

In other words, Excel’s objects are arranged hierarchically, but global members provide shortcuts through that hierarchy. Table 4-1 lists some commonly used shortcuts for navigating to Excel objects.

Table 4-1. Excel’s global shortcut members

Member	Returns	Use to
ActiveCell	Range object containing a single cell	Work with the currently selected cell or get the upper-lefthand corner of a selected block of cells.
ActiveChart	Chart object	Get the chart that currently has focus.
ActiveSheet	Worksheet, Chart, or other sheet object.	Get the sheet that has focus. The returned object may be a Worksheet, a Chart ...