Excel Macro: Sort Worksheets by Name

There's no built-in tool to alphanumerically sort Worksheets in Excel. If you want to sort worksheets by name, you need to drag and drop the sheet tabs on the sheet tab bar. If you have multiple worksheets, it seems very boring to do it manually. In this situations, you can use this simple macro.

Sort Worksheets by Name

'------------------ Modules ------------------
Sub SortWorksheetsByName()
'Step 1: Declare your Variables
    Dim CurrentSheetIndex As Integer
    Dim PrevSheetIndex As Integer
'Step 2: Turn screen updating off to speed up your macro code
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
'Step 3: Set the starting counts and start looping
    For CurrentSheetIndex = 1 To Sheets.count
        For PrevSheetIndex = 1 To CurrentSheetIndex - 1
'Step 4: Check Current Sheet against Previous Sheet
            If UCase(Sheets(PrevSheetIndex).Name) > UCase(Sheets(CurrentSheetIndex).Name) Then
'Step 5: If Move Current sheet Before Previous
                Sheets(CurrentSheetIndex).Move Before:=Sheets(PrevSheetIndex)
            End If
'Step 6 Loop back around to iterate again
        Next PrevSheetIndex
    Next CurrentSheetIndex
'Step 7: Turn screen updating on
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

This macro simply iterates through the sheets in the workbook, comparing the current sheet to the previous one. If the name of the previous sheet is greater than the current sheet (by alphabetically), the macro moves the current sheet before it. By the time all the iterations are done, you’ve got a sorted workbook!

Note that this macro is doing a text-based sort, so you may not get the results you were expecting when working with number-based sheet names. For instance, Sheet10 comes before Sheet2 because textually, 1 comes before 2. Excel doesn’t do the numbers-based sorting that says 2 comes before 10.

How This Macro Works

1. In Step 1 declares two integer variables. The CurrentSheetIndex holds the index number for the current sheet iteration, and the PrevSheetIndex variable holds the index number for the previous sheet iteration.
2. In Step 2, we use Application.ScreenUpdating = False to turn screen updating off to speed up this macro code.
3. In Step 3, the macro starts iteration counts for both variables. Note that the count for the PrevSheetIndex is one number behind the CurrentSheetIndex. After the counts are set, we start looping.
4. In Step 4, we check to see whether the name of the previous sheet is greater than that of the current sheet. In this step, note the use of the UCase function. We use this to get both names in the same uppercase state. This prevents sorting errors due to differing case states.
5. Step 5 is reached only if the previous sheet name is greater than the current sheet name. In this step, we use the Move method to move the current sheet before the previous sheet.
6. In Step 6, we go back around to the start of the loop. Every iteration of the loop increments both variables up one number until the last worksheet is touched. After all iterations have been spent, the macro ends.
7. Finally, you should turn screen updating on use Application.ScreenUpdating = True.

How to Use This Macro