How to use ActiveCell in VBA in Excel

In VBA, the active cell is a property that represents the cell that is active at the moment. When you select a cell or navigate to a cell and that green box covers that cell you can use ACTIVECELL property to refer to that cell in a VBA code. There are properties and methods that come with it.

Use the Active Cell Property

1. Type the keyword “ActiveCell”.
2. Type a dot (.) to get the list properties and methods.
3. Select the property or method that you want to use.
4. Run the code to perform the activity to the active cell.

Important Points

• When you use the active cell property VBA refers to the active cell of the active workbook’s active sheet’s, irrespective of how many workbooks are open at the moment.
• ActiveCell is ultimately a cell that comes with all the properties and methods that a normal cell comes with.

Activate a Cell from the Selected Range

To activate a cell using a VBA code there are two ways that you can use one “Activate” method and “Select” method.

Sub vba_activecell()

'select and entire range
Range("A1:A10").Select

'select the cell A3 from the selected range
Range("A3").Activate

'clears everything from the active cell
ActiveCell.Clear

End Sub

The above code, first of all, selects the range A1:A10 and then activates the cell A3 out of that and in the end, clears everything from the active cell i.e., A3.

Return Value from the Active Cell

The following code returns the value from the active cell using a message box.

MsgBox ActiveCell.Value

Or if you want to get the value from the active cell and paste it into a separate cell.

Range("A1") = ActiveCell.Value

Set Active Cell to a Variable

You can also set the active cell to the variable, just like in the following example.

Sub vba_activecell()

'declares the variable as range
Dim myCell As Range

'set active cell to the variable
Set myCell = ActiveCell

'enter value in the active cell
myCell.Value = Done

End Sub

Get the Row and Column Number of the ActiveCell

With the active cell, there comes a row and column property that you can use to get the row and column number of the active cell.

MsgBox ActiveCell.Row

MsgBox ActiveCell.Column

Get Active Cell’s Address

You can use the address property to get the address of the active cell.

MsgBox ActiveCell.Address

When you run the above code, it shows you a message box with the cell address of the active cell of the active workbook’s active sheet (as I mentioned earlier).

Move from the Active Cell using the Offset

With offset property, you can move to a cell that is several rows and columns away from the active cell.

ActiveCell.Offset(2, 2).Select

Select a Range from the Active Cell

And you can also select a range starting from the active cell.

Range(ActiveCell.Offset(1, 1), ActiveCell.Offset(5, 5)).Select