VBA Range Activate - Explained with Examples

Why we need to activate a Range using VBA?

When we are automating any tasks we can activate a range and perform different tasks with the active range. For example, we can format the background color, font color, font style, font size etc.

VBA Activate Range – Syntax

Here is the example syntax to activate a range using VBA.

Range(“YourRange”).Activate

Usage:The below excel macro will activate range D1.

Range(“D1”).Activate

Here, Activate is the method of Range object. Where D1 is the Range which we want to activate.

VBA Activate Range – Examples

Please see the below VBA codes to activate a Range.

Example 1:Activating one single cell.

The below macro can be used to activate a one single cell. It can be written in two ways. The first one is using Range object and the second statement is using cells object(Range is a collection of cells or one single cell).

Sub Activating_Single_Cell()
    Range("A2").Activate
    'or
    Cells(2, 1).Activate
End Sub

In Range(“A2”).Activate statement ‘A2’ is the range which we are activating. Here, ‘A’ is the column name and ‘2’ is the row number.

In Cells(2, 1).Activate statement ‘2’ is the row number and ‘1’ is the column number.

Example 2:Activating Multiple cells.

The below macro can be used to activate multiple cells. You can mention the start range and end range separated with a colon. For example, To activate a range from A2 to C3, you can mention as Range(“A2:C3”).Activate. This will activate A2, A3,B2,B3,C2,C3 Cells.

Sub Activating_multiple_Cells()

Range("A2:C3").Activate

End Sub

Example 3: Activating Multiple cells using VBA

We can also use the Cells syntax to active multiple Cells. The below macro will activate the same range (A2:C3) whcih we discussed above using Cells and Range object.

Sub Activating_multiple_Cells()

Range(Cells(2, 1), Cells(3, 3)).Activate

End Sub

Here Cells(2, 1) refers to A2 and Cells(3, 3) refers to C3. and wee need to use comma (,) instead of colon (:).

VBA for Activating a Range – Instructions

Please follow the below step by step instructions to execute the above mentioned VBA macros or codes:

1. Open an Excel Workbook
2. Press Alt+F11 to Open VBA Editor
3. Insert a Module from Insert Menu
4. Copy the above code for activating a range and Paste in the code window(VBA Editor)
5. Save the file as macro enabled workbook
6. Press ‘F5’ to run it or Keep Pressing ‘F8’ to debug the code line by line.

Now, you can see the range A2:C3 is activated in the active worksheet.

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