Maintaining the Active Cell

An Excel workbook can contain any number of individual worksheets. As you move around within the various worksheets, Excel keeps track of which cell is selected in which worksheet. When you switch to a new worksheet, Excel makes active the cell that was last active within that worksheet. Thus, if you last selected cell F9 in the worksheet, that is the one that is selected when you display the worksheet again, regardless of what was selected in the previous worksheet.

For some workbooks, however, you may want Excel to make the active cell in the selected worksheet the same as the active cell in the previous worksheet. There is no setting to automatically do this in Excel, but there are a couple of things you can try. One thing is to follow these steps:

1. Hold down the Ctrl key as you click on the tab of the worksheet you want to go to. Two worksheet tabs should now be selected; the one with the bold name is the one that is actually displayed on the screen.
2. Click on the tab for the worksheet you want to go to. Both tabs should still be selected, but just the one you clicked on should have its name in bold.
3. Hold down the Ctrl key as you click on the tab of the worksheet you just left.

These steps work because you are "grouping" worksheets. When you do, Excel makes the selected cells the same for all worksheets in the group.

Remembering to use the Ctrl-click-click-Ctrl sequence can be cumbersome, at best. It is also a sequence that can be fraught with danger, because if you forget to do step 3, you could end up making unintended changes on your worksheets. (While you are working with grouped worksheets, any change you make on one sheet is similarly changed on all the sheets in the group.)

These three steps cannot be automated with macros, but you can take a different approach with a macro to accomplish the same task. The first thing you need to do is declare a public variable anywhere within a module of the workbook, as shown here:

Public sAddress As String

This variable, sAddress, will be used to store the current address of the active cell. In the "ThisWorkbook" module of the workbook, add these two macros:

Private Sub Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, _
  ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
    sAddress = ActiveCell.Address
End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
    On Error Resume Next
    If sAddress > "" Then Sh.Range(sAddress).Select
End Sub

The first macro is run automatically by Excel any time that the selected cell changes. All it does is retrieve the address of whatever cell is active, and then store that address in the sAddress variable.

The second macro is automatically run whenever a workbook is activated. It checks to see if there is anything stored in sAddress. If there is, it selects whatever cell address is stored there. The error code is necessary in case you select a sheet that doesn't use cells, such as a chart sheet.

This macro approach works great if you only want to make this navigational change in a single workbook or two. If you prefer to make the change "system wide" (so to speak), you must be a little more complex in your approach to the macro. In this case, you need to place your code in the Personal.xls workbook so that it is loaded every time you start Excel. Specifically, place the following code into a new class module of the Personal.xlsm workbook. This class module should be named something descriptive, such as ClassXLApp:

Public WithEvents gobjXLApp As Excel.Application
Private mstrAddress As String

Private Sub gobjXLApp_WorkbookActivate(ByVal Wb As Excel.Workbook)
    On Error Resume Next
    If mstrAddress > "" Then ActiveSheet.Range(mstrAddress).Select
End Sub

Private Sub gobjXLApp_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
    On Error Resume Next
    If mstrAddress > "" Then Sh.Range(mstrAddress).Select
End Sub

Private Sub gobjXLApp_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, _
  ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
    mstrAddress = Selection.Address
End Sub

Next, open the "ThisWorkbook" module of your Personal workbook and copy the following code to it:

Private mobjXLApp As New ClassXLApp

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
    Set mobjXLApp.gobjXLApp = Excel.Application
End Sub

Once you save your Personal workbook and restart Excel, the range in the first workbook that opens will be selected in the next worksheet that is selected.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (10562) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Maintaining the Active Cell.