The Excel Object Model
Excel Objects and Collection
Excel consists of many objects. VBA is the programming language that interacts with and
manipulates these objects. These objects are organised hierarchically, and can be illustrated as a
tree. The Application object is at the top of the tree – it represents Excel itself.
Many of the objects are in collections, but not all (for instance, the Application object is not) – the
Application object can be said to contain the other objects in the illustration, some of which are
collections. Collections are objects themselves – a collection contains the singular object, e.g. a
collection of Workbooks contains individual Workbook objects. A clue is you can tell a collection
because its name ends with an ‘s’ (for instance, the Workbooks collection) - though this is not always
the case eg SmartTagOptions. A more reliable indication is that in diagrams the collection is
accompanied by the singular object in brackets (e.g. Workbooks (Workbook)). Figure 1 is a
reproduction of part of the object model as depicted in Help in Excel 2002.
These objects are contained in
the Application object
These objects are contained in
the Workbook object
Figure1
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The advantage of looking at the object model is that when writing or recording macro code you will
refer to objects, and it helps to understand where they fit in the scheme of things. The object model
is somewhat large, but most of the objects can be ignored in the first instance, and one can
concentrate on the objects that are fundamental to working with Excel. When an understanding of
the general principles is achieved these principles can be applied to objects that are more peripheral.
Note also the object hierarchy can’t be represented easily in a two-dimensional diagram – the
object model is a bit more fluid than that. For example, the Windows collection appears twice: once
as an object in the Application object, and once as an object contained in the Workbook object. In the
former case you would say “the Application object contains a collection of Windows”, and in the latter
you would say “the Workbook object contains a collection of Windows”. If you are writing a macro
with just one workbook open then both references refer to the same thing. (Note though that in
general you don’t work with windows in code, but worksheets and ranges)
Collections
Objects often come in collections eg. Workbooks.
Figures 2 and 3 illustrate a selection of important collections and objects; Figure 3 explicitly
expands the Collection objects, but conceptually the figures are identical.
Application
Workbooks (Workbook)
Worksheets (Worksheet)
Windows (Window)
Charts (Chart)
Windows (Window)
Range
Figure 2
Application
Workbooks
Windows
Workbook
Window
Worksheets
Worksheet
Charts
Chart
Windows
Window
Range
Figure 3
The way to express either diagram in words is as follows:
The Application object contains a collection of Workbooks; the collection of Workbooks consists of
individual Workbook objects. An individual Workbook object contains (amongst other things) a
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collection of Worksheets. The individual Worksheet object contains (amongst other things) individual
Range objects.
The ideas involved are not simple – Collections contain Objects, and Objects contain Collections!
What does the Workbooks collection contain?
It contains individual Workbook objects
Figure 4
You can use Help to explore in more detail. Click the Workbook object box.
Other objects also contain the Workbook object:
Application
Figure 5
object, RecentFile object, Workbooks collection.
a workbook contains many objects e.g.
Names collection, Worksheets collection, Sheets collection, Styles
collection, Chart object, Windows collection.
What does the individual Worksheet object contain?
Again, multiple objects, e.g. the collection of
Names, Range objects (note there is no Ranges
collection object).
Figure 6
Figure 7 reproduces the contents of the Worksheet object from Excel 2002 Help
Again there is a large number of objects – you will want to work with Range and Names objects
sooner rather than later, the PageSetup object is useful to control printing.
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Figure 7
You will want to refer to cells, rows and columns in your macro code. This is a little more involved.
In each case you use the Range object, but not in the way you might expect at this stage. A range
does not ‘contain’ a cell or cells (nor rows and columns), rather a range represents (or ‘is’) a cell or
cells, a row or rows, a column or columns.
What the Range object does contain is other objects: Areas, Borders, Errors, Interior, Font objects, and so
on. It may be confusing that Help refers to the ‘Range Collection’.
is a singular object, and there is no Ranges
collection object. Help says Range “represents a cell, a
row, a column, a selection of cells containing one or
more contiguous blocks of cells, or a 3-D range” .
Range
Figure 8
It may help to think that a Range object acts like a
collection object that can hold collections of cells,
collections of row, collections of columns
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Object References
In your code you cannot manipulate objects unless you know how to refer to them. There are
several overall concepts to bear in mind:
 Some objects, e.g. Workbooks and Worksheets can be referred to by name or by index number.
 There are references that are shortcuts, which you won’t see explicitly in the object model,
eg. ActiveWorkbook, ActiveSheet, ActiveCell but they represent a Workbook, Worksheet and Range
object respectively
 If there is a default for an object or a property of an object, you can leave it out of the
reference
You could refer to an object by name by navigating a path through the hierarchy, e.g.
Application.Workbooks("prices.xls").Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1").Value
but this can be shortened. You would only need to use the Application object in a reference to a
workbook if you were programming outside of Excel, so you can leave it out. Secondly, if you are
referring to a worksheet in the current, or active, workbook, then you can leave out the reference to
the workbook. Thirdly, if you are referring to the current worksheet, you can leave out the
reference to it, so
Range("A1").Value
is a valid reference to the contents of
A1
in the current worksheet.
Here are some more examples:
Workbooks("d:\spreadsheets\prices.xls")
Workbooks(2)
Worksheets(“Sheet1”)
Worksheets(2)
Workbooks(2).Worksheets(2)
Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("B3")
Range(“B3”)
specify the pathname as a string if you want to
open it
the second workbook to have been opened
a worksheet named Sheet1 in the active
workbook
the second sheet in tab order in the active
workbook
the second worksheet in the second workbook
cell B3 on the particular sheet in the reference
cell B3 on the active sheet
Referring to ranges
There is a variety of notations for the range object, because a range can be a cell or cells, a row, a
column and so on.
When you want to refer to a two-dimensional range you have the following options:
Range("A1:C5")
Range("A1","C5")
cells A1:C5 on the active sheet
as above, using top left and bottom right corners
also there are the less commonly used
Range("D1:E1, G1:J5")
Range("A2:F3 A1:D5")
a union
an intersection
See ‘Properties that represent Objects’ for more examples of using Ranges.
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Objects have Properties
An object’s properties define the characteristics of an object. A Worksheet has a Name property, a
Visible propery, a Range has a Value property, a Locked property and many others. Collection objects
also have properties too, but different properties to the singular object. The collection of
worksheets has a Count property, whose value is the number of worksheets in the workbook – the
Count property is read-only, but other properties are easy to change. The syntax is object.property e.g.
Worksheets.Count
In code you may want to ‘set’ an object’s property, or else you may want to ‘get’ the value of an
objects property, i.e. find out what it is and perhaps use it in your code..
‘Setting’ a property
To set a property it is you type the reference on the left hand side of an equals sign and on the right
hand side you type the new setting, e.g.,
Worksheets(1).Visible = False
Range("A9").Value = "Fixed Assets"
Range("B10").Value = 23000
Objects can have default properties; when you refer to a range that is a single cell, then its default
property is Value. Therefore in code you could shorten the line
Range("A1").Value = 50
to
Range("A1") = 50
You can assign the result of, say, adding two cells as follows:
Range("A3").Value = "=A1+A2"
Range("A3").Formula = "=A1+A2"
The value property and the formula property are mostly interchangeable
In both cases A3 has the formula =A1+A2
Similarly
Range("A3").Value = "=Average(A1:A2)"
would literally place the function in cell A3
Range("A3:A5").Font.Bold = True
Range("A3:A5").Interior.ColorIndex = 4
Range("A3:A5").Interior.Color = vbYellow
Note there is often more than one property to accomplish the same thing – the ones
that require an integer value, like ColorIndex, tend to be older ones retained for
backwards compatibility. More modern ones take a constant i.e. vbYellow in the
example – which one would you prefer to try and remember?
‘Getting’ a property
To ‘get’ a property you type a variable on the left hand side of an equals sign, and on the right hand
side you type a reference to the property. e.g.,
subTotal = Range("A3").Value
where subTotal is a suitably declared
variable
Objects have Methods
A method is an action that an object can perform on itself. The syntax is object.method
Workbooks.Add
Range("A1:B3").Clear
Selection.Clear
Worksheets("Sheet1").Activate
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Some methods take arguments – these arguments may or may not be compulsory. For example, if
you use the Workbooks.Open method you must provide a filename or valid reference to a filename:
Workbooks.Open "d:\spreadsheets\myfile.xls"
On the other hand the Close method takes an optional argument – compare the following examples:
Workbooks(2).Close
Workbooks(2).Close False
Workbooks(2).Close True
‘will prompt to save changes
‘closes without saving changes
‘closes and saves changes
Properties that represent Objects
Often the Excel Object Model provides a property that returns an object. Many of these techniques
are to do with ranges – in Excel ranges consist of cells, or rows or columns, or 3D ranges; ranges
can have names, a range may or may not be selected at a given moment. Therefore there is more
variation available than the Range(“A1”) syntax we have been using so far.
Selection
The Selection ‘object’ is actually a property of the Application or Window object which returns a Range
object; therefore you can use Selection as a valid reference to a Range, and use the Range object’s
properties and methods according to the same rules. For example, the two statements:
Range("A1:B3").Select
Selection.Clear
are equivalent to
Range("A1:B3").Clear
ActiveCell
is a property of the Application or Window object that returns a range representing the active cell.
The following expressions all return the active cell, and are all equivalent:
ActiveCell
ActiveCell
Application.ActiveCell
ActiveWindow.ActiveCell
Application.ActiveWindow.ActiveCell
Naturally use the shortest! Examples:
ActiveCell.Value = 23
ActiveCell.Font.Bold = True
Be careful to distinguish between the active cell and the selection. The active cell is a single cell
inside the current selection. The selection may contain more than one cell, but only one is the
active cell.
Property
When a worksheet is the active sheet, you can use the ActiveSheet property to refer to it. ActiveSheet is
a property of the Application, Window or Workbook object that returns a worksheet.
ActiveSheet
The following example uses the Activate method to activate a worksheet, sets the page orientation to
landscape mode, and then prints the worksheet.
Worksheets("Sheet1").Activate
ActiveSheet.PageSetup.Orientation = xlLandscape
ActiveSheet.PrintOut
Rows and Columns
Rows and columns are properties of the Worksheet, Range or Application object that return a Range object
– you won’t find them in the Object Model.
You can simply refer to rows or columns by using an index number e.g.
Rows(3).Select
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Columns(2).Select
Using this syntax is equivalent to using ActiveSheet.Columns
This is how the macro recorder handles selecting a single row or column:
Rows("3:3").Select
Columns("B:B").Select
Multiple rows or columns are referenced as follows:
Columns("B:E").Select
Rows("3:8").Select
However, syntax such as
Columns("B:E", "H:J").Select
does not work. The Application object has a Union method, though, which you could use to accomplish
this kind of thing. For example,
Union(Columns(2), Columns(4)).Select
or even
Union(Columns(2), Rows(4)).Select
Sometimes a method requires a reference to a range that is a column or a row e.g.
Columns("A:D").AutoFit
but
Selection.Autofit
or Range("A1:D4").Autofit would both be invalid.
Cells
Again, there is no official Cells collection nor a Cell object, but the Cells property acts as though it
returns a cells collection as a Range object. A reference to Cells is a reference to a property of the
Worksheet, Range or Application object that returns a Range object. When used with a Range object the
Cells property returns the same object so effectively does nothing:
Range("A1:D8").Cells.Count
Range("A1:D8").Count
are equivalent.
You can use the syntax Cells(i,j) which would return the cell at row i and column j. For example
Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(5,3).Clear
clears the contents of row 5 column 3, i.e. cell C5
This example uses a row and column index i.e. 5 and 3. If only one number is supplied e.g.
Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(1).Clear
then the first cell on the worksheet is cleared i.e. cell A1.
NB: Cells(2) would refer to B1 – the index moves across the columns – as there are 256 columns
Cells(257) would reference cell A2.
Using the Cells property without an object qualifier returns a Range object that represents all the
cells on the active worksheet e.g.
Cells.Count
returns 16777216 (the number of cells on a worksheet.)
In fact
Cells
Application.Cells
ActiveSheet.Cells
are all equivalent statements.
This example sets the font and font size for every cell on Sheet1 to 8-point Impact.
With Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells.Font
.Name = "Impact"
.Size = 8
End With
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