Excel Macro: Saving a Workbook When a Specific Cell Is Changed

Sometimes, you may want to save a workbook when a specific cell is changed or range of cells is changed. This macro allows you to define the range of cells that, when changed, forces the workbook to save.

Saving a Workbook When a Specific Cell Is Changed

'------------------ Worksheet ------------------
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)

'Step 1: Does the changed range intersect specified range?
    If Intersect(Target, Range("A5:A10")) Is Nothing Then

'Step 2: If there is no intersection, exit procedure
    Exit Sub

'Step 3: If there is an intersection, save the workbook
    Else
    ActiveWorkbook.Save

'Close out the If statement
    End If

End Sub

How This Macro Works

The secret to this code is the Intersect method. Because we don’t want to save the worksheet when any old cell changes, we use the Intersect method to determine if the target cell (the cell that changed) intersects with the range we have specified to be the trigger range (A5:A10 in this case).

The Intersect method returns one of two things: either a Range object that defines the intersec- tion between the two given ranges, or nothing. So in essence, we need to throw the target cell against the Intersect method to check for a value of Nothing. At that point, we can make the decision whether to save the workbook.

1. In Step 1, we are simply checking to see if the target cell (the cell that has changed) is in the range specified by the Intersect method. A value of Nothing means the target cell falls outside the range specified.
2. Step 2 forces the macro to stop and exit the procedure if there is no intersection between the target cell and the specified range.
3. If there is an intersection, Step 3 fires the Save method of the active workbook, overwriting the previous version.
4. In Step 4, we simply close out the If statement. Every time you instantiate an If…Then…Else check, you must close it out with a corresponding End If.

How to Use This Macro