Skipping Hidden Rows in a Macro

When using a worksheet, it is not uncommon to hide rows that contain data you don't want displayed at the current time. If you have written a macro that processes the data in the worksheet, you may have wondered how to skip over and not process the rows that you have marked as hidden.

The way you accomplish this is to check the Hidden property of each row. If the property is True, then the row is hidden; if False, then row is visible.

As an example of how this works, assume that you have a worksheet that you use to track clients. Some of these clients are considered active, and others inactive. To mark a client as inactive, you hide the row containing the client. At some point, you want to number the active clients, and you want to do it using a macro. The following macro will do the trick for you:

Sub NumberClients()
    Dim c As Range
    Dim j As Integer

    If Selection.Columns.Count > 1 Then
        MsgBox "Only select the cells you want numbered"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    j = 0
    For Each c In Selection
        If Not c.Rows.Hidden Then
            j = j + 1
            c.Value = j
        Else
            c.Clear
        End If
    Next c
End Sub

To use the macro, simply select the cells in which the numbering will be done. The macro checks, first of all, to make sure you have only selected cells in a single column. Then, it steps through each cell in the selected range. If the row containing the cell is not hidden, then the counter (j) is incremented and stored in the cell. If the row containing the cell is hidden, then the contents of the cell are cleared. The key to this macro is the If ... End If structure that tests the value of the Hidden attribute.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2286) 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: Skipping Hidden Rows in a Macro.