What does "Activate" mean

[mikecox39]

This is my first post; but probably not my last

I am studying John Walkenbach’s book: “Excel 2010; Power Programming with VBA”. It’s huge, but I need to learn how to automate a budget spreadsheet I’ve been developing over the years; for the next condo association treasurer. I know how to use it, but no one else does!

Today I read the following:

VBE doesn’t have a menu command to close a workbook. You must reactivate Excel and close it from there.

Notice that Excel is activated when the macro execute.

My question is; What does it mean to “Activate” XL?

 

[sheetspread]

Go back to the spreadsheet window and close or write a line of code in the VBE (it doesn't have a "close workbook" menu choice).

 

[mikecox39]

Go back to the spreadsheet window and close or write a line of code in the VBE (it doesn't have a "close workbook" menu choice).

Sorry, but that didn't answer the question.

But let me ask what you mean by "spreadsheet window"?

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[davefrancis]

Activating a window simply means to make it the focus of your GUI. As an example, open several programs such as Excel, a browser, VBE, and Freecell. When you alt + tab to cycle through the programs, you are activating each one that you land on. Your keyboard strokes get routed to the "active" window which is why you cannot type a URL into the address bar of your browser when Excel is activated. Conversely, you cannot type in a formula into a cell until you activate that window. VBA scripts work in a similar fashion.

 

[mikecox39]

Activating a window simply means to make it the focus of your GUI. As an example, open several programs such as Excel, a browser, VBE, and Freecell. When you alt + tab to cycle through the programs, you are activating each one that you land on. Your keyboard strokes get routed to the "active" window which is why you cannot type a URL into the address bar of your browser when Excel is activated. Conversely, you cannot type in a formula into a cell until you activate that window. VBA scripts work in a similar fashion.

Well that was simple enough; I mean Dah! Seems like it would be simpler to just say; make the window active, because it's not really activating XL it's activating a window; it generic.

Thanks