How do I activate a specific workbook and a specific sheet?

Question

How do I activate my Other workbook from the Current workbook? I have a current workbook with dumb.xls and The other workbook name as Tire.xls.I have opened the Tire.xls from the dumb.xls using worksbooks.open filename:= "name of the file".Its getting open but The problem is Im unable to make it work.

If I say cells(2,24).value=24 puts these value in the cell of dumb.xls but I want it to be done one Tire.xls.

activesheet.cells(2,24).value=24 puts these on Tire.xls. But how do i activate the Workbook with the name ? I need to open 3 to 4 excel workbooks And perform the operation? How do I activate the specific workbook

I have found this code on google

     activeworkbook.worksheet("sheetname").activate  ' but not working
     windows("sheetname").activate ' people on google suggested not to use

Its not getting activated. I dont know how to make it work. Can anyone tell me How do i activate a specific workbook and a specific sheet of the other workbook ?

Example: I have niko.xls and niko_2.xls opened as workbooks from the dumb.xls workbook so totally 3 workbooks and I have to activate the 2nd sheet of niko_2.xls workbook.How do I make it? Can anyone explain me the syntax with these example? Thank you in advance

Answer 1

You do not need to activate the sheet (you'll take a huge performance hit for doing so, actually). Since you are declaring an object for the sheet, when you call the method starting with "wb." you are selecting that object. For example, you can jump in between workbooks without activating anything like here:

Sub Test()

Dim wb1 As Excel.Workbook
Set wb1 = Workbooks.Open("C:\Documents and Settings\xxxx\Desktop\test1.xls")
Dim wb2 As Excel.Workbook
Set wb2 = Workbooks.Open("C:\Documents and Settings\xxxx\Desktop\test2.xls")

wb1.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 1).Value = 24
wb2.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 1).Value = 24
wb1.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 1).Value = 54

End Sub

Answer 2

You have to set a reference to the workbook you're opening. Then you can do anything you want with that workbook by using its reference.

Dim wkb As Workbook
Set wkb = Workbooks.Open("Tire.xls") ' open workbook and set reference!

wkb.Sheets("Sheet1").Activate
wkb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 1).Value = 123

Could even set a reference to the sheet, which will make life easier later:

Dim wkb As Workbook
Dim sht As Worksheet

Set wkb = Workbooks.Open("Tire.xls")
Set sht = wkb.Sheets("Sheet2")

sht.Activate
sht.Cells(2, 1) = 123

Others have pointed out that .Activate may be superfluous in your case. You don't strictly need to activate a sheet before editing its cells. But, if that's what you want to do, it does no harm to activate -- except for a small hit to performance which should not be noticeable as long as you do it only once or a few times. However, if you activate many times e.g. in a loop, it will slow things down significantly, so activate should be avoided.