Microsoft Office

Working with Excel Events
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.
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding events
Using workbook-level events
Working with worksheet events
Using non-object events
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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 must go into a specific type of code module.
Code for workbook-level events goes into the ThisWorkbook code module. Code
for worksheet-level events goes into the code module for the particular sheet (for
example, the code module named Sheet1).
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