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: Switching Windows in a Macro.

Switching Windows in a Macro

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated December 2, 2017)

1

Andrew needs, in his macro, to display a dialog box that allows a user to switch windows. When someone clicks the Window menu (in Excel), the available workbooks are listed at the bottom of the menu. Those are what Andrew needs to show up in the dialog box. He wonders if there is a built-in dialog box to do this, or if he needs to create his own.

The short answer is that there is no built-in dialog box to accomplish this task. You can, however, easily create your own. Here is a simple example:

Sub SwitchWindows()
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim n As Integer
    Dim s As String
    Dim v As Variant

    n = Windows.Count
    s = "Choose Window from:"
    For i = 1 To n
        s = s & Chr(10) & i & ")  " & Windows(i).Caption
    Next
    s = s & Chr(10) & "Enter a number from 1 to " & n
    v = Application.InputBox(prompt:=s, Type:=2)
    i = Val(v)
    If i >= 1 And i <= n Then
        Windows(i).Activate
    End If
End Sub

All this does is create a list of the names for each window in your system. It presents them in an InputBox, and then switches to whatever window the user selected.

If you are seeking different ways to present the same information, you can refer to this tip.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11910) 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: Switching Windows in a Macro.

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. ...

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What is 5 + 3?

2017-12-04 07:40:04

Henk

Hi Allen

I get a run time error of type mismatch in the following line:

i = Val(v)

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