Inserting and Copying Rows

As you are editing worksheets, you may notice that some of your work is done based on work you have done before. For instance, you may have a row of data that you entered in a previous Excel session. In this session, you need to copy that row of data and use it as the basis for your new data, but with a few changes.

In such a situation, it would be nice to have a quick way to enter a blank row after the current row, and copy the data in the current row to the new blank row. There are no intrinsic commands in Excel to do this, but a macro can do it very handily. Consider the following example:

Sub InsertCopyRow1()
    ActiveCell.EntireRow.Select
    Selection.Copy
    Selection.Insert Shift:=xlDown
End Sub

In order to use the macro, all you need to do is select a cell in any row. When the macro is run, a duplicate of the current row is inserted just below the row you are in.

The only problem with this solution is that it leaves the Excel interface a bit "messy" (for lack of a better word). When completed, a complete row is still selected, and the new row has the "marching ants" marquee around it.

This problem can be overcome by including commands to collapse the selection and move it to a desired location. Another way is to simply use a different macro that relies on different VBA commands. The following macro will also insert and copy a row, but it leaves the cell that you selected active:

Sub InsertCopyRow2()
    ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).EntireRow.Insert
    ActiveCell.EntireRow.Copy ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).EntireRow
End Sub