Copying Data without Leaving the Currently Selected Cell

Henri would like to copy the data contained in a source cell to a destination cell without leaving the current position on the worksheet. In other words, he would like to copy from cell A1 to cell AE459 without leaving his current position at V104. He wonders if such an edit is even possible.

Of course, the obvious approach to this is to simply put the formula =A1 into cell AE459. Then, Excel takes care of making sure that the two cells are equal. You could also open a second window on the worksheet and take care of the copying within that window; the cell selected in the original window (cell V104) would remain unchanged.

If you actually want to do a "copy" operation, though, without opening a second window, then you'll need to resort to a macro.

Copying from one cell to another within a macro is rather easy. For instance, the following example will copy the contents of cell A1 to AE459 without affecting whatever cell you currently have selected:

Sub CopyCell1()
'   Copy the cell value to destination cell
    Range("AE459") = Range("A1")
End Sub

If you want to copy a formula that is in cell A1 to the destination, then you need to modify how the copy is done. Specifically, you need to use the Copy method using the destination range as a parameter.

Sub CopyCell2()
'   Copy the relative formula to destination
    Range("A1").Copy Range("AE459")
End Sub

Of course, a drawback of these macros is that they are static—they only copy from cell A1 to cell AE459. If your copying needs can vary, you may want to consider performing the task in the VB Editor's Immediate window. Just pop open the editor and type the single line from the appropriate macro into the window. The copying is then done and you can close the editor, all without affecting whatever cell you had selected.

Another way to provide a bit of flexibility into the source and destination for the macro is to have it (the macro) prompt the user for the source and destination. The following macro takes this approach.

Sub CopyCell3()
    Dim SrceCell As String
    Dim DestCell As String

    SrceCell = InputBox("Copy From Cell ...")
    DestCell = InputBox("Copy To Cell ...")
    Range(DestCell) = Range(SrceCell)
End Sub

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9949) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013.