Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Detecting Types of Sheets in VBA.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 15, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
If you are writing macros that process different worksheets in a workbook, you may have a need to figure out what type of worksheets there are in the workbook, before doing any processing. This can be especially critical because some VBA commands only work on certain types of worksheets.
Before you can figure out what types of worksheets are in a workbook, it is helpful to know how Excel internally stores some of the objects that make up the workbook. Excel maintains both a Worksheets collection and a Charts collection. The Worksheets collection is made up of worksheet objects, and the Charts collection is made up of chart sheet objects. Chart sheet objects are those charts that take up an entire worksheet; it does not include those that are objects embeded within a worksheet.
Interestingly enough, worksheet and chart sheet objects are also members of the Sheets collection. So, if you want to process a workbook in the order that the sheets occur, it is easiest to do so by stepping through the Sheets collection. When you do so, you can examine the Type property of individual objects within the collection to determine what type of object it is. Excel defines four types of objects that can belong to the Sheets collection:
You might be tempted to think that looking at the list of sheet types is enough. Interestingly, however, Excel doesn't always return what you would expect for the Type property. Instead, if you examine the Type property for a chart, it returns a value equal to xlExcel4MacroSheet. This can cause problems for any macro.
The way around this, then, is to compare the name of each item in the Sheets collection against those in the Charts collection. If the name is in both collections, than it is safe to assume that the sheet is a chart. If it is not in both, then you can analyze further to see if the worksheet is one of the other types. The following macro, SheetType, follows exactly this process:
Sub SheetType() Dim iCount As Integer Dim iType As Integer Dim sTemp As String Dim oChart As Chart Dim bFound As Boolean sTemp = "" For iCount = 1 To Sheets.Count iType = Sheets(iCount).Type sTemp = sTemp & Sheets(iCount).Name & " is a" bFound = False For Each oChart In Charts If oChart.Name = Sheets(iCount).Name Then bFound = True End If Next oChart If bFound Then sTemp = sTemp & " chart sheet." Else Select Case iType Case xlWorksheet sTemp = sTemp & " worksheet." Case xlChart sTemp = sTemp & " chart sheet." Case xlExcel4MacroSheet sTemp = sTemp & "n Excel 4 macro sheet." Case xlExcel4IntlMacroSheet sTemp = sTemp & "n Excel 4 international macro sheet" Case Else sTemp = sTemp & "n unknown type of sheet." End Select End If sTemp = sTemp & vbCrLf Next iCount MsgBox sTemp End Sub
When you run the macro, you see a single message box that shows the name of each sheet in your workbook, along with what type of sheet it is.
Note:
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2538) 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: Detecting Types of Sheets in VBA.
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