Finding Workbooks Containing Macros

Richard's company, like many others, uses Excel quite a bit. In fact, they have thousands and thousands of Excel workbooks that they have collected over the years. Richard needs a way to find out which of those workbooks have VBA macros in them, without the need to open and inspect each workbook individually. He wonders if there is an easy way to do this.

One rather simplistic way to find all your workbooks containing macros is to just look for any files that use the XLSM or XLSB extensions. Workbooks that contain macros must be stored in files using these extensions. While not 100% foolproof, it is a good place to start.

You could also use the search capabilities of Windows (outside of Excel) and search for any file that contains the text "End Sub" or "End Function". That will quickly identify any potential candidate workbooks, as any VBA procedure must use one of these two statements at its end.

If you are using legacy workbooks (those developed using Excel 2003's file format), then you actually need to look inside each of the workbooks. This can be done programmatically, meaning that you could have a macro that opens each workbook in a folder and examines it to see if there are any macros within it.

As an example, you could create a macro that steps through each of the files in a directory and determines if the file is an Excel workbook. It can then open the file and check to see if it has a VBA project within it.

Sub FindMacros()
    Dim sPath As String
    Dim sFile As String
    Dim sFoundFiles As String

    'specify directory to use - must end in "\"
    sPath = "C:\MyData\Excel Data\"

    sFile = Dir(sPath)
    Do While sFile <> ""
        If InStr(sFile, ".xls") > 0 Then
            Workbooks.Open (sPath & sFile)
            If Workbooks(sFile).HasVBProject Then
                sFoundFiles = sFoundFiles & sFile & vbCrLf
            End If
            Workbooks(sFile).Close (False)
        End If
        sFile = Dir     ' Get next filename
    Loop
    If Len(sFoundFiles) = 0 Then
        MsgBox "No workbooks found that contain macros"
    Else
        sFoundFiles = "The following workbooks contain macros:" & _
          vbCrLf & vbCrLf & sFoundFiles
        MsgBox sFoundFiles
    End If
End Sub

This example uses the HasVBProject property (introduced to the Excel object model in Excel 2007) to determine whether the file has any macros or not. When complete, the macro displays a message box that lists those worksheets containing macros.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12466) 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: Finding Workbooks Containing Macros.