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: Tying Workbooks Together.

Tying Workbooks Together

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 25, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Don wonders if there is a way to "tie" two or more workbooks together so they are always open (and closed) at the same time. One relatively easy way to get close to this desire is to create, within Excel, what is called a workspace. You can do this by following these general steps:

  1. Open all the workbooks you want to be used together.
  2. Choose Save Workspace from the File menu.

That's it; Excel creates a workspace file that includes information about the workbooks you currently have open. Later, when you want all the workbooks open, you can simply open the workspace file (it has an xlw extension) and all the workbooks that make up that file are opened.

While this is a great way to open all the workbooks you need at one time, it doesn't answer the requirement of always having those workbooks be open. For instance, your workspace may include five workbooks, but once opened you can easily close one, two, or more of the individual workbooks in the workspace. The requirement that it be "all or nothing" for the member workbooks isn't met.

If you want to make sure that all the requirements are met, then the only way you can do it is to use a macro. You could include a Workbook_Open event-handler macro in all five of the workbooks that checked to see if the other workbooks in the group were open or not. If they weren't, then the macro could open them. You would also need to create a Workbook_BeforeClose event handler that would make sure that all the other workbooks in the group were closed.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8144) 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: Tying Workbooks Together.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Extracting Proper Words

If you've got a list of potential words, and you want to know which of those potential words are real, you'll appreciate ...

Discover More

Creating Endnotes

Endnotes are often used in scholarly or legal documents, and they can be added easily. This tip shows how to add them ...

Discover More

Counting Unique Values

Need to know a count of unique values in a range of cells? There are a couple of ways you can tackle the problem.

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Using a Single Password for Multiple Workbooks

While password protecting a workbook does provide some security for the contents in the workbook, if you have several ...

Discover More

Problems with Default Workbook and Worksheet Templates

You can create a default template for both your workbooks and worksheets. These should be placed in the xlstart folder, ...

Discover More

Accessing a Problem Shared Workbook

What are you to do is you share a workbook with others, and then suddenly the workbook won't open properly? Dealing with ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 2 + 8?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.