Creating a Copy without Formulas

John knows how to create a copy of a worksheet, but he needs to create a copy that uses only static values, not values based on formulas. He wonders if there is a quick way to make a copy (perhaps with a macro) that maintains all formatting and column widths, but has all formulas replaced with their results. For the work John does this would be very helpful in sending out worksheets to individuals outside his organization.

This task is rather easy to accomplish, with or without a macro. If you want to do it without a macro, follow these steps:

1. Choose Move or Copy Sheet from the Edit menu. Word displays the Move or Copy dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Move or Copy dialog box.

2. Check the Create a Copy check box.
3. Using the To Book pull-down list, choose New Book.
4. Click OK. Excel copies the worksheet to a new workbook.
5. Make sure the newly created workbook is the one displayed.
6. Select all the cells in the worksheet by pressing Ctrl+A.
7. Copy all the cells to the Clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C.
8. Chose Paste Special from the Edit menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Paste Special dialog box.

9. Click the Values radio button.
10. Click OK.

That's it. Your newly created worksheet doesn't contain any formulas, only the results of the formulas in the original worksheet. If you prefer to use a macro-based approach, it only takes a few lines of code:

Sub CopyWorksheetValues()
    ActiveSheet.Copy
    Cells.Copy
    Range("A1").PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues
    Application.CutCopyMode = False
End Sub

Of course, if you want to distribute only the results of your worksheet, you might consider simply printing a PDF file and then distributing it. The added benefit is that your recipients don't need to have Excel to view it. The downside is that if your worksheet is very large, a PDF file can be rather unwieldy.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12381) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Creating a Copy without Formulas.