Making sure public VBA methods don't show up in the list of Excel macros

Question

In Excel VBA (2003), I\'ve noticed that any Public or Friend Sub method in either a module or ThisWorkbook that

Answer 1

Just a small addendum to Jason Z's answer: methods hidden by Option Private Module are still visible if you use Application.Run() to invoke the method.

Answer 2

One solution is to give the method an Optional argument.

Public Sub myPublicSub(Optional dummy_var As Integer)
    ...
End Sub

Answer 3

My methods have already been listed however, ChrisB made the following statement:

Perhaps we should all have Option Private Module at the tops of our code modules as a rule – except where the module contains procedures called by buttons

Even Private routines can be called from a button if the Macro is assigned to the button before making it private.

Answer 4

Add the following to the top of your module:

Option Private Module

From MSDN:

When a module contains Option Private Module, the public parts, for example, variables, objects, and user-defined types declared at module level, are still available within the project containing the module, but they are not available to other applications or projects.

Answer 5

Also worth noting a side effect of both Option Private Module and adding Optional Params is that the Sub will no longer work as a target of a shortcut keybinding.

Restated: If you have a keybinding to set a keyboard shortcut to launch a Macro. That Macro cannot be hidden. Otherwise the keybinding will not work.