Can VBA run in background?

[z329]

Is there a way have a macro working on one worksheet (in the background) while I am manually working on another?

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

Generally no. A VBA procedure will take focus until it's complete, with the exception of displaying a modeless user form, input box, or some other method of queuing user interaction. But those are all initiated by a VBA procedure, and it will continue once they're answered/dismissed.

Whatcha' trying to do?

 

[schielrn]

Welcome to the Board!

You can open the 2 files in separate instances of Excel. There are a couple ways of doing this, but this is the easiest IMO if you don't understand what separate instances is:

Open the first file and then go to Start-->Run or press Windows Key + R. Then type in Excel.exe and click ok. Now this will open another instance and open the 2nd file from this instance. Then you can runt he macro in the first instance and run another macro or work on the workbook in this instance. You can do this with as many instances as your computer memory will allow you to do.

Hope that helps.

 

[z329]

Thanks Smitty....Basically, I have large amounts of data that I crunch and rather than doing it manually, I have automated most of it. Some of the find/replace/delete functions take up to a half hour and I had hoped that I could do other work on Excel while the macro was running.

 

[Smitty]

If you post your code we may be able to streamline it a bit. Otherwise I'd go with the second instance recommendation.

 

[z329]

Thanks guys...schielrn's idea worked perfectly.