Jumping To a Specific Page

Suppose that you have a large worksheet that requires 16 pages when printed out. You may wonder if there is a way, when working within the worksheet, to jump to some given page, such as page 5.

Word users know that they can, within Word, use the Go To dialog box to jump to various pages, but no such feature exists in Excel. There are a couple of ways you can approach the problem, however.

One approach is to select the cell that appears at the top of a page. (For instance, that cell that appears at the top-left of page 5.) You can then define a name for the cell, such as Page05. Do this for each page in your worksheet, and you can then use the features within Excel to jump to those names.

Another way you can do this is to use the page break preview mode. (To switch to page break preview, choose View | Page Break Preview.) You can then see where the page breaks are, select a cell on the page you want, and then return to normal view.

It is possible to also create a macro that will let you jump to a specific page, but it isn't as easy as you might think. The reason has to do with the possible use of hard page breaks, which can change where pages start and end. The following macro might do the trick for you, however. It prompts the user for a page number and then selects the top-left cell on the page entered.

Sub GotoPageBreak()
    Dim iPages As Integer
    Dim wks As Worksheet
    Dim iPage As Integer
    Dim iVertPgs As Integer
    Dim iHorPgs As Integer
    Dim iHP As Integer
    Dim iVP As Integer
    Dim iCol As Integer
    Dim lRow As Long
    Dim sPrtArea As String
    Dim sPrompt As String
    Dim sTitle As String

    Set wks = ActiveSheet
    iPages = ExecuteExcel4Macro("Get.Document(50)")
    iVertPgs = wks.VPageBreaks.Count + 1
    iHorPgs = wks.HPageBreaks.Count + 1
    sPrtArea = wks.PageSetup.PrintArea

    sPrompt = "Enter a page number (1 through "
    sPrompt = sPrompt & Trim(Str(iPages)) & ") "
    sTitle = "Enter Page Number"

    iPage = InputBox(Prompt:=sPrompt, Title:=sTitle)

    If wks.PageSetup.Order = xlDownThenOver Then
        iVP = Int((iPage - 1) / iHorPgs)
        iHP = ((iPage - 1) Mod iHorPgs)
    Else
        iHP = Int((iPage - 1) / iVertPgs)
        iVP = ((iPage - 1) Mod iVertPgs)
    End If

    If iVP = 0 Then
        If sPrtArea = "" Then
            iCol = 1
        Else
            iCol = wks.Range(sPrtArea).Cells(1).Column
        End If
    Else
        iCol = wks.VPageBreaks(iVP).Location.Column
    End If

    If iHP = 0 Then
        If sPrtArea = "" Then
            lRow = 1
        Else
            lRow = wks.Range(sPrtArea).Cells(1).Row
        End If
    Else
        lRow = wks.HPageBreaks(iHP).Location.Row
    End If

    wks.Cells(lRow, iCol).Select
    Set wks = Nothing
End Sub

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (5823) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.