10.

Overview

After completing this chapter, you will be able to:

• Manipulate collections of workbooks and worksheets.

• Manipulate individual workbook and worksheet items.

• Use the Immediate window to execute individual statements.

Think back on your third-grade classroom. Your wooden frame desk, decorated with decades of crudely carved names, was fourth from the front, over in the last row next to the windows. Remember those big stairs down to the main floor, with that magnificent banister you would always watch for a chance to slide down? The main hallway was papered with drawings clustered around each classroom door. Each door led to a classroom, and each classroom was filled with kids.

A Microsoft Excel workbook is a lot like a school. The cells in a worksheet appear in rows and columns like students in a classroom. Worksheets are grouped into workbooks like classrooms in a school. And Excel can have several open workbooks, just as a city can have several schools. Just as you were able to move around freely in the rooms and halls of your old elementary school, you will soon be able to move around freely in Excel objects with your macros. Microsoft Visual Basic interacts with Excel by working with Excel objects. Everything in Excel that Visual Basic can control-workbooks, worksheets, cells, menus, text box controls-are objects. To control Excel from Visual Basic effectively, you must understand what objects are and how they work in Excel.