Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 22, 2023)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365
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.
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2023-07-22 11:47:33
J. Woolley
For more on this subject, see https://excelribbon.tips.net/T010091_Remembering_Workbook_Position_and_Size.html
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