Controlling Window Size when Opening Additional Workbooks

If Steven has a workbook open and maximized, and then he opens one or more additional workbooks, the additional workbooks look maximized but aren't really. The left, bottom, and right sides of these additional workbooks are at the edges of the screen, but the tops cascade downward, like index cards offset from each other. To Steve, it would be much better if the additional workbooks opened either as a smaller portion of the window or as fully maximized so that he could then "restore" the windows to a smaller size. He wonders if there is some setting that controls the window size for these additional workbooks when they are opened.

You can rather easily affect what happens with a workbook window through the use of macros. The normal place to do this would be in the Workbook_Open macro, which is an event handler in the ThisWorkbook object. Here's a very simple version that would simply make sure that the window is maximized:

Public Sub WorkBook_Open()
    Application.WindowState = xlMaximized
End Sub

You can then, if you want, manually adjust the size of the maximized window.

Of course, you could also "build out" the macro so that it manipulates the window in other ways. For instance, the following is a macro that will determine the maximum screen size of the monitor on which the workbook is opening, and then it adjusts the window size to occupy 72% of the screen width and 96% of the screen height.

Public Sub WorkBook_Open()
    Dim iMaxWidth As Integer    'Screen width (pixels)
    Dim iMaxHeight As Integer   'Screen height (pixels)
    Dim sngStartX As Single     'Upper-left corner of desired window
    Dim sngStartY As Single     'Upper-left corner of desired window
    Dim sngWidth As Single      'Width of desired window
    Dim sngHeight As Single     'Height of desired window

    'Specifications for final window size
    sngStartX = 0.14   'Fraction of screen width from left edge
    sngStartY = 0.02   'Fraction of screen height from top
    sngWidth = 0.72    'Fraction of screen width desired
    sngHeight = 0.96   'Fraction of screen height desired

    With Application
        'Maximize screen in order to grab maximum width and height
        .WindowState = xlMaximized
        iMaxWidth = .Width
        iMaxHeight = .Height
        .WindowState = xlNormal

        'Set final window position and size
        .Top = iMaxHeight * sngStartY
        .Left = iMaxWidth * sngStartX
        .Width = sngWidth * iMaxWidth
        .Height = sngHeight * iMaxHeight
    End With
End Sub

You can, of course, adjust the settings in the two variables (sngWidth and sngHeight) to pick a different final screen size. You could also adjust the settings in the sngStartX and sngStartY variables to specify the position for the upper-left corner of the final window.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (4975) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.