Vba excel check if sheet exist

If you want to create a sheet, want to delete it, or move or copy it, there’s one thing that you need to know if that sheet exists or not.

To write code to check whether the sheet exists or not you need a loop that loops through each sheet in the workbook and matches the name you have provided. But here’s the thing, you can use two different loops for this (For Next and For Each), and today we will use both.

In this tutorial, we will look at different ways to do that, so, make sure to have the developer tab on your ribbon and open the VBA editor to write this code.

Check IF a Sheet Exists in the Current Workbook

With this loop, you can refer to all the sheets in the workbook and loop through each one by one to match the name of the sheet with the sheet name that you want to search for.

Follow these steps:

1. First, declare a variable to use for the sheet while performing the loop and to store the sheet name that you want to search.
   
2. Next, write a line of code for an input box to enter the name of the sheet that you wish to search.
   
3. After that, start your loop with the For Each keyword. And use the variable to refer to each worksheet in the workbook.
   
4. From here, you need to write an IF THEN ELSE statement to match the name of the sheet with the name that you have entered in the input box, and then show a message box if match found and exit the procedure.
   
5. In the end, a message box to inform you if there’s no match found.
   

Helpful Links: Run a Macro – Macro Recorder – Visual Basic Editor – Personal Macro Workbook

Full Code:

Sub vba_check_sheet()

Dim sht As Worksheet
Dim shtName As String

shtName = InputBox(Prompt:="Enter the sheet name", _
Title:="Search Sheet")

For Each sht In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets

    If sht.Name = shtName Then

            MsgBox "Yes! " & shtName & " is there in the workbook."
            Exit Sub

    End If

Next sht

MsgBox "No! " & shtName & "is not there in the workbook."

End Sub

Let me explain how this works: When you run this code, it shows you a message where you need to enter the sheet name that you wish to find.

After that, it loops through each sheet to match the name with the name you have entered, and if the name matches with a sheet, it shows you a message and another message if there’s no match.

Here is another code to check if a sheet exists or not.

Sub vba_check_sheet()

Dim sht As Worksheet
Dim shtName As String
Dim i As Long

i = Sheets.Count

shtName = InputBox(Prompt:="Enter the sheet name", _
Title:="Search Sheet")

For i = 1 To i

    If Sheets(i).Name = shtName Then

            MsgBox "Yes! " & shtName & " is there in the workbook."
            Exit Sub

    End If

Next i

MsgBox "No! " & shtName & " is not there in the workbook."

End Sub

This code uses the FOR NEXT loop and uses the total count of sheets in the workbook, and based on that, perform a loop in each sheet that matches the name with the name you have entered.

Check IF Sheet Exists in Closed Workbook

In the following code, you have a loop that searches for the sheet name in a closed workbook. To refer to the file, we used the file address.

Sub vba_check_sheet()

Dim wb As Workbook
Dim sht As Worksheet
Dim shtName As String

shtName = InputBox(Prompt:="Enter the sheet name", _
Title:="Search Sheet")

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

Set wb = Workbooks.Open _
("C:UsersDellDesktopsample-file.xlsx")

For Each sht In wb.Worksheets

    If sht.Name = shtName Then

        wb.Close SaveChanges:=True
        MsgBox "Yes! " & shtName & " is there in the workbook." _
        , vbInformation, "Found"
        Exit Sub

    End If

Next sht

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

MsgBox "No! " & shtName _
& " is not there in the workbook.", _
vbCritical, "Not Found"

End Sub

When you run this macro, it opens the file at the back end as you have turned OFF the screen updating, and once it loops through all the sheets, you have code to turn ON the screen updating.

Note: As you can see, in the file location address, we have the file extension that means you need to have the correct extension of the file to refer to it.

• Back to VBA Worksheet / VBA Tutorial

In this post you will learn how to check whether a particular worksheet exists inside a workbook. There are few different ways to check it. I will show you two methods here. In both methods we are going to use the name of the worksheet to identify the existence. First method will use a string comparison function and the second method will use an error handling technique.

Here is a sample workbook which contains a few worksheets.

This workbook has three worksheets. Names of the worksheets are “Input”, “Tmp” and “Output”. Assume we want to check if sheet “Tmp” exists inside this workbook. Here is the first function you can use to check that.

And this is how you can call this function from a subroutine.

If you run the macro when the “Tmp” sheet is available inside the workbook then you will see this message box.

This is the result you will see when there is no “Tmp” sheet.

Below is the explanation for the first function.

This function has two parameters. And the data type of the return value is boolean.

Function IsSheetExist(WB As Workbook, SheetName As String) As Boolean

Function uses a For Each Next statement to iterate through the sheets of the given workbook.

StrComp function is used to compare the given name with each and every sheet name.

Learn more about StrComp function

If a match is found then the function will return the value “True” and exit.

For Each WS In WB.Worksheets
     If StrComp(SheetName, WS.Name, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
          IsSheetExist = True
          Exit Function
     End If
Next WS

If the function is unable to find a matching sheet name inside the For Each Next statement, the code will be executed until the “End Function” line. Then the function will return false as the default value of a VBA function is false.

In this method we are going to use error handling techniques to check if a sheet exists in a workbook. Below is the complete code for the second function.

You can call this function from a subroutine same as we did above for the first function.

Set WS = WB.Worksheets(SheetName)

If there is no sheet named as SheetName then the above line will generate an error like this.

To prevent that run-time error “On Error Resume Next” statement is used before that line. So the program will execute the next lines without raising the error. Next the below part will identify whether there is an error or not and output return value for the function accordingly.

If Err <> 0 Then
     IsSheetExist = False
Else
     IsSheetExist = True
End If

In VBA we use <> for not equal. It is the opposite of = symbol. So Err<>0 means error is not equal to zero. So there is an error. Then we can decide that the error occurred due to there not being such a sheet. So we return false for the function. Else we can return true.

So we learnt two different ways to check if a sheet exists inside a workbook. Sometimes we have to take some other actions after checking the existence of a particular sheet. Now let’s look at a few examples where we need to take another action after checking the existence of a sheet.

Check if sheet exists and delete using VBA

Sometimes you may need to check whether a particular sheet exists and then delete it if it exists. Here is one way to do it.

You can call the above function inside a subroutine like this.

You might wonder why you need to check the existence of the sheet. You can delete the sheet straight away. Then if an error raises when there is no sheet with that name you can use “On Error Resume Next” to proceed without any interruption. Actually you can delete the sheet without checking its existence. But the problem is that errors can be raised due to different other reasons. For example, an error can be raised if you try to delete a sheet of a protected workbook. However there is a turnaround for that as well. You can identify the reason for the runtime error using the err number and then develop the code accordingly.

If sheet does not exist skip

Sometimes you may need to skip some processes if a sheet does not exist. For an example assume you want to call another subroutine if a sheet exists and skip if it doesn’t.

Also you can shorten the above if statement section like this as well.

There may come a time when you need to know if a sheet in a workbook exists either during VBA code execution or as a result within the workbook. You may be creating and deleting sheets with your VBA code and will need to test if a sheet exists before it’s created/deleted to avoid run-time errors. You may also have functions in your workbook that depend on sheets you’re creating or deleting and you need to check if they exist.

A User Defined Function To Check If A Sheet Exists Within The Current Workbook

This is a simple VBA function that will return true if the current workbook contains a sheet with the exact name passed through the function and returns false otherwise. This function is not case sensitive so Sheet1 and SHEET1 are considered to be the same (sheet names in Excel are not case sensitive). Here the VBA is formatted as a user defined function.

Function WorksheetExists(SheetName As String) As Boolean
    
Dim TempSheetName As String

TempSheetName = UCase(SheetName)

WorksheetExists = False
    
For Each Sheet In Worksheets
    If TempSheetName = UCase(Sheet.Name) Then
        WorksheetExists = True
        Exit Function
    End If
Next Sheet

End Function

With this code we can use =WorksheetExists(B3) to test any text string to see if it exists as a sheet name in the current workbook.

There could be a time when you have to check if a worksheet, which you have create or deleted in a workbook in a VBA macro / code, exists. We can do this easily using a function / macro. There are multiple ways of checking if a worksheet exists.

We will cover the following ways in this article:

1. User Defined Function known as UDF
2. Sub routine through message box

First option: User Defined Function

Following snapshot contains few sheets names & we will check if the names of sheet in column A exist.

To find if a specific sheet exists, we need to follow the below steps to launch VB editor

• Click on Developer tab
• From Code group select Visual Basic

• Copy the below code in the standard module

Option Explicit

Function WorksheetExists(ByVal WorksheetName As String) As Boolean
Dim Sht As Worksheet

    For Each Sht In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
        If Application.Proper(Sht.Name) = Application.Proper(WorksheetName) Then
            WorksheetExists = True
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next Sht
WorksheetExists = False
End Function

• In order to check, we will use UDF in cell B2 as
• =WorksheetExists(A2)

• In the above image, “MasterSheet” does not exist in our sample workbook; hence, formula has given answer as False

Code Explanation:

This function takes the value for “WorksheetName” from the macro which performs other activities. If you need to change it as per your code, you may.

For Each Sht In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets and Next Sht are the starting and ending parts of the loop respectively.

Then If Application.Proper(Sht.Name) = Application.Proper(WorksheetName) Then

            WorksheetExists = True

Checks if the Sheet name is matching the Sheet name passed from the main macro. If it does, WorksheetExists is True, and we can exit the function. Otherwise, WorksheetExists = False is returned back to the main macro. The loop goes from the 1st sheet to the next until all the sheets have been checked.

Second Option: Sub routine through message box

We can have a normal subroutine which is calling a UDF and, if the specified sheet is found, the message box will display, ‘sheet exist’; if not found, then msgbox pops up, ‘sheet not found’.

To check, we will copy the following code in the standard module:

Function WorksheetExists2(WorksheetName As String, Optional wb As Workbook) As Boolean
    If wb Is Nothing Then Set wb = ThisWorkbook
    With wb
        On Error Resume Next
        WorksheetExists2 = (.Sheets(WorksheetName).Name = WorksheetName)
        On Error GoTo 0
    End With
End Function

Sub FindSheet()
If WorksheetExists2("Sheet1") Then
    MsgBox "Sheet1 is in this workbook"
Else
    MsgBox "Oops: Sheet does not exist"
End If
End Sub

After running the macro “FindSheet”, we will get the following message box if sheet exists:

If Sheet does not exist we will get the following message box:

Similarly, we can have a simple IF loop which checks if the sheet exists and performs certain actions thereafter.

Sub test()
Dim ws As Worksheet
    For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
         If ws.Name <> "Main" Then
            ws.Range("A1").Value = ws.Name
        Else
            ws.Range("A1").Value = "MAIN LOGIN PAGE"
        End If
    Next ws
End Sub

• To test the above macro, we need to create a sheet name “Main”. This macro is very simple
• It loops through each worksheet in the workbook
• Then it checks if the worksheet name is not MAIN
• If it is MAIN, it displays text, like “MAIN LOGIN PAGE” in A1 of that sheet, else it displays the name of the sheet in cell A1

• This is just another way of checking if the sheet exists. If it exists, perform action A, if not, action B

Conclusion: We can identify whether a sheet exists in our workbook or not; we can use UDF or subroutine as per our convenience.

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1. Check if Sheet Exists in VBA
2. Check if Sheet Exists in Closed Workbook in VBA

We will introduce how to check if a sheet exists using VBA in Excel.

Check if Sheet Exists in VBA

While working on multiple sheets, there may be some duplicate sheets, or we may want to save ourselves from creating any duplicate sheets. For this purpose, we can use VBA to check if there are any sheets with the same name for which we may want to create a sheet.

To check whether the sheet exists, we require a loop along with each sheet in the workbook and compare the names we have created. We will use two loops; one will be the For each loop, and the second one will be the If Else statement.

First, we will create two variables: one will store the worksheet, and the second one will store the sheet’s name for which we want to look for duplicates or check if the sheet with this name exists. We will use the for loop to go through all the files in a folder and the if-else statement to check if the sheet’s name exists with the same name as the other sheet.

If the file exists with the same name, we will show a message box that says that the sheet exists. Otherwise, the message box will display that the sheet doesn’t exist.

Code:

#VBA
Sub sheetCheck()

Dim sheet As Worksheet
Dim Name As String

Name = "Sheet1"

For Each sheet In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets

    If sheet.Name = Name Then

            MsgBox "Yes! " & Name & " is there in the workbook."
            Exit Sub

    End If

Next sheet

MsgBox "No! " & Name & "is not there in the workbook."

End Sub

Output:

When we searched for sheet1, we got the positive response that the sheet with the same name already exists.

Check if Sheet Exists in Closed Workbook in VBA

There may be some situations where we may also want to check for the sheets in an excel file that are closed or on which we have already worked. We can also check for the sheets in closed excel files by opening the files using the VBA and the For each loop with the If else statement as we used in the above example.

Let’s try to check for the sheet in a closed excel file.

Code:

#VBA
Sub checkSheet()

Dim book As Workbook
Dim sheet As Worksheet
Dim Name As String

Name = "Sheet1"

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

Set book = Workbooks.Open _
("C:UsersHp9470DocumentsBook2.xlsx")

For Each sheet In book.Worksheets

    If sheet.Name = Name Then

        book.Close SaveChanges:=True
        MsgBox "Yes! Sheet Exists"
        Exit Sub

    End If

Next sheet

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

MsgBox "No! Sheet doesn't exists"

End Sub

Output:

The sheet exists in the closed excel file we accessed using the open function. In this way, we can check both opened and closed files about sheets using the name way.