Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 4, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
Ken is having a problem with his Personal.xlsb workbook. When he needs to work on it, he unhides it. If he forgets to hide it again when he is done, then the next time he starts Excel the Personal.xlsb workbook is immediately visible. Since it looks like a new, blank worksheet, he often starts typing in it and this messes up his Personal.xlsb workbook. He wonders if there is a way to automatically force Personal.xlsb to be hidden if he forgets to hide it manually.
There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind. First, if you are only making changes to macros in Personal.xlsb, you don't need to unhide the workbook to work on those macros. Instead, display the VBA editor and use the object browser to make sure you are working on the macros in the Personal.xlsb workbook. When you are done editing the macros, you can save them without ever needing to make the workbook visible.
If this still doesn't work for you—perhaps you have some other reason to make Personal.xlsb visible—then you could make some sort of editing change to the first worksheet in the workbook. For instance, place the text "THIS IS PERSONAL" into cell A1 of the workbook. Do something to make it stand out (large, bold, colors, etc.), and you will never again miss that you are working in the Personal workbook when you first start Excel.
If you want a macro approach to make sure that the workbook is hidden, then you could add the following code to the ThisWorkbook object for Personal.xlsb:
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean) Windows("PERSONAL.XLSB").Visible = False ThisWorkbook.Save End Sub
The macro is executed just before the workbook is closed (which happens when Excel is exited). It hides the workbook and then saves it. That way, the next time you start Excel, Personal.xlsb will be automatically hidden.
Note:
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12159) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Automatically Hiding the Personal Workbook.
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2022-05-14 16:40:15
Jan Burch
Hi Allen,
Thanks for this article.
I keep personal.xlsb hidden, but if I open a new blank workbook, and go into Developer > Macro and select a macro in personal.xlsb to edit, I get error message: "Cannot edit a macro on a hidden workbook. Unhide the workbook using the Unhide command." Your article says I don't have to unhide it to edit a macro. Is there something I should be doing?
Thanks,
Jan
2020-09-06 08:42:05
Ron S MVP
It's not working for me ...
(see Figure 1 below)
Figure 1.
2017-06-10 12:22:55
Dean Cardno
You could also save it as an add-in, set to load for each session
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