Creating Worksheets from a List of Names

Koen has a worksheet that has a list of names in column A. She needs to create a worksheet for each name in the list and have the worksheet named according to that name. Koen suspects this will require a macro, but she's not sure how to go about such a task.

This task is relatively easy to do if you use a macro, and there are any number of ways you could go about it. One simple way is to select your list of worksheet names and then run the following macro.

Sub AddWorksheetsFromSelection()
    Dim CurSheet As Worksheet
    Dim Source As Range
    Dim c As Range

    Set CurSheet = ActiveSheet
    Set Source = Selection.Cells
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    For Each c In Source
        sName = Trim(c.Text)
        If Len(sName) > 0 Then
                Worksheets.Add After:=Worksheets(Worksheets.Count)
                ActiveSheet.Name = sName
        End If
    Next c

    CurSheet.Activate
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

The macro essentially grabs each cell in your selection, creates a new worksheet, and then renames that worksheet according to whatever was in the cell.

The macro checks to make sure that a particular cell actually contains something (you can't rename a worksheet if there is no name in the cell), but it still isn't nearly as robust as it might be. There could be other flaws in your list of worksheet names that might lead to errors when the macro is run. For instance, what if your list contains duplicates? Or it contains names that Excel doesn't allow? These (and any number of other errors) could be anticipated and the code changed to handle such situations.

While using a macro to create the worksheets is fast and easy, you may want to note that you don't necessarily need to use a macro. In fact, you could use the PivotTable capabilities of Excel to create the desired worksheets. Let's assume, for the sake of this example, that your desired worksheet names are in column A of a worksheet, and that cell A1 contains a heading for the column (such as "Names" or "Worksheets"). What you want to do is to create a PivotTable that is based on these names. Follow these steps:

1. Select any worksheet name in the column.
2. Display the Insert tab of the ribbon.
3. Click the PivotTable tool, at the left side of the ribbon. Excel displays the Create PivotTable dialog box, with your range of worksheet names already specified. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Create PivotTable dialog box.

4. Click OK. Excel creates the PivotTable and displays the PivotTable Fields pane at the right side of the screen.
5. In the PivotTable Fields pane, click the checkbox next to the field used for your list of worksheets. (It should be something like "Names" or "Worksheets.") Excel adjusts the PivotTable.
6. Drag the checked field name ("Names" or "Worksheets") into the Filters area of the PivotTable Fields pane. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The PivotTable Fields pane with a filter set.

7. Make sure the Analyze tab of the ribbon is displayed. (It should have been displayed by default after you created the PivotTable.)
8. Click the down-arrow under the PivotTable tool, at the left side of the ribbon. Excel displays some choices you can make.
9. Click the down-arrow at the right side of the Options choice. (Don't click the Options choice itself; that displays a dialog box. You want to just click the down-arrow.)
10. Choose the Show Report Filter Pages option. Excel displays the Show Report Filter Pages dialog box.
11. Click OK. Excel creates a worksheet for each worksheet name in your list.

It is important to realize that at this point each of the new worksheets contains a small PivotTable. To get rid of these PivotTables, you might think that you can create a selection set of the new worksheets (click the first worksheet tab and then hold down the Shift key as you click the last worksheet tab) and then press the Delete key. In my testing, though, this doesn't work—Excel won't let you make changes to PivotTables in group edit mode. Instead, you'll need to display each worksheet, in turn, and delete the PivotTables.

This may seem like a lot of work, but if you only need to create all these worksheets a single time, it can be a relatively quick way to do it without the need of invoking a macro.

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