Copy sheet and get resulting sheet object?

Question

Is there any easy/short way to get the worksheet object of the new sheet you get when you copy a worksheet?

ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(\         


        

Answer 1

I've been trying to create a reliable generic "wrapper" function for the sheet.Copy method for re-use across multiple projects for years.

I've tried several of the approaches here and I've found only Mark Moore's answer to be a reliable solution across all scenarios. Ie the one using the "Template (2)" name to identify the new sheet.

In my case, any solution using the "ActiveSheet method" was useless as in some instances the target workbook was in a non-Active or hidden Workbook.

Similarly, some of my Workbooks have hidden sheets intermixed with visible sheets in various locations; at the beginning, in the middle, at the end; and therefore I found the solutions using the Before: and After: options also unreliable depending on the ordering of the visible and hidden sheets, along with the additional factor when the source sheet is also hidden.

Therefore after several re-writes, I've ended up with the following wrapper function:

'***************************************************************************
'This is a wrapper for the worksheet.Copy method.
'
'Used to create a copy of the specified sheet, optionally set it's name, and return the new
' sheets object to the calling function.
'
'This routine is needed to predictably identify the new sheet that is added. This is because
' having Hidden sheets in a Workbook can produce unexpected results in the order of the sheets,
' eg when adding a hidden sheet after the last sheet, the new sheet doesn't always end up
' being the last sheet in the Worksheets collection.
'***************************************************************************
Function wsCopy(wsSource As Worksheet, wsAfter As Worksheet, Optional ByVal sNewSheetName As String) As Worksheet

    Dim Ws              As Worksheet

    wsSource.Copy After:=wsAfter
    Set Ws = wsAfter.Parent.Sheets(wsSource.Name & " (2)")

    'set ws Name if one supplied
    If sNewSheetName <> "" Then
        Ws.Name = sNewSheetName
    End If
    Set wsCopy = Ws
End Function

NOTE: Even this solution will have issues if the source sheet's Name is more than 27 chars, as the maximum sheet name is 31, but that is usually under my control.