Excel Screen Updating

It can sometimes be useful to stop Excel from updating the screen (or window) while a macro is running. This isn't commonly used when your macro is short and quick to run, but longer/slower macros can employ this as it speeds up the runtime of the macro. This is because Excel no longer has to refresh the screen every time the macro uses a Scroll, Activate, Select, etc. command or whenever formulas need to be re-calculated.

Switching off the screen updating is extremely simple to do. It's best to do it at the beginning of the macro, but you can also switch it on and off repeatedly as many times as you like in a macro (if there is something specific you want to have updated while the macro runs). To switch screen updating off add the following line to your code:

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

And to turn screen updating back on, use this line:

Application.ScreenUpdating = True

As mentioned above, you would usually put these lines at the beginning and end of your macro respectively; something like this:

Sub Macro()
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    'The rest of your code

    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

And don't worry - when the macro ends and the focus switches back to Excel, screen updating is automatically enabled again, so while it's always a good idea to remember to enable screen updating again at the end of your code, it's not completely necessary!