How to split excel sheet into multiple worksheets vba

Watch Video – How to Split Each Excel Sheet Into Separate Files

If you have an Excel workbook with many worksheets, there is no easy way to split each of these sheets into separate Excel files and save separately.

This could be needed when you sheets for different months or regions or products/clients and you want to quickly get a separate workbook for each sheet (as an Excel file or as PDFs).

While there is a manual way to split sheets into separate workbooks and then save it, it’s inefficient and error-prone.

In this tutorial, I will give you a simple VBA code that you can use to quickly (in a few seconds) split all the worksheets into their own separate files and then save these in any specified folder.

• Split Each Worksheet Into a Separate Excel File
• Split Each Worksheet and Save as a Separate PDFs
• Split Only those Worksheets that Contain a Word/Phrase into Separate Excel Files

Split Each Worksheet Into a Separate Excel File

Suppose you have a workbook as shown below where you have a worksheet for each month.

To split these sheets into a separate Excel file, you can use the below VBA code:

'Code Created by Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com
Sub SplitEachWorksheet()
Dim FPath As String
FPath = Application.ActiveWorkbook.Path
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Sheets
    ws.Copy
    Application.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=FPath & "\" & ws.Name & ".xlsx"
    Application.ActiveWorkbook.Close False
Next
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

There are a few things you need to make sure before using the above VBA code:

1. Create a folder where you want to get all the resulting files.
2. Save the main Excel file (which has all the worksheets that you want as separate files) in this folder.

Once you have this done, then you can put the above VBA code in the file and run the code.

The above code is written in a way that it picks up the location of the folder using the path of the file (in which the code is run). This is why it’s important to save the file in the folder first and then use this code.

How does the VBA code work – The above code uses a simple For Next loop that goes through each worksheet, creates a copy of the worksheet in an Excel workbook, and then saves this Excel workbook in the specified folder (which is the same that has the main file with all the sheets).

Below are the steps to place this VBA code in the Excel workbook (these will be same for all the other methods shown in this tutorial):

Where to put this code?

Below are the steps to place the code in the Visual Basic Editor where it can be executed:

The above steps would instantly split the worksheets into separate Excel files and save these. It takes only a second if you have less number of worksheets. In case you have a lot, it may take some time.

The name of each saved file is the same as that of the sheet name it had in the main file.

Since you have placed a VBA code in the Excel workbook, you need to save this with a .XLSM format (which is the macro-enabled format). This will ensure the macro is saved and works when you open this file next.

Note that I have used the lines Application.ScreenUpdating = False and Application.DisplayAlerts = False in the code so that everything happens in the backend and don’t see things happening on your screen. Once the code runs and split the sheets and saves these, we turn these back to TRUE.

As a best practice, it’s recommended to create a backup copy of the main file (which has the sheets that you want to split). This will ensure you don’t lose your data in case anything goes wrong or if Excel decides to become slow or crash.

Split Each Worksheet and Save as a Separate PDFs

In case you want to split the worksheets and save these as PDF files instead of the Excel files, you can use the below code:

'Code Created by Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com
Sub SplitEachWorksheet()
Dim FPath As String
FPath = Application.ActiveWorkbook.Path
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.DisplayAlerts = False

For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Sheets
    ws.Copy
    Application.ActiveSheet.ExportAsFixedFormat Type:=xlTypePDF, Filename:=FPath & "\" & ws.Name & ".xlsx"
    Application.ActiveWorkbook.Close False
Next

Application.DisplayAlerts = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Things you need to make sure before using this code:

1. Create a folder where you want to get all the resulting files.
2. Save the main Excel file (which has all the worksheets that you want as separate files) in this folder.

The above code split each sheet in the Excel file and save it as a PDF in the same folder where you have saved the main Excel file.

Split Only those Worksheets that Contain a Word/Phrase into Separate Excel Files

In case you have a lot of sheets in a workbook and you only want to split only those sheets that have a specific text in it, you can do that as well.

For example, suppose you have an Excel file where you data for multiple years and each sheet in the file has the year number as the prefix. Something as shown below:

Now, let’s say you want to split all the sheets for 2020 and save these as separate Excel files. To do this, you need to somehow check the name of each worksheet and only those sheets that have the number 2020 should be split and saved, and the rest should be left untouched.

This can be done using the following VBA macro code:

'Code Created by Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com
Sub SplitEachWorksheet()
Dim FPath As String
Dim TexttoFind As String
TexttoFind = "2020"
FPath = Application.ActiveWorkbook.Path
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.DisplayAlerts = False

For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Sheets
    If InStr(1, ws.Name, TexttoFind, vbBinaryCompare) <> 0 Then
        ws.Copy
        Application.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=FPath & "\" & ws.Name & ".xlsx"
        Application.ActiveWorkbook.Close False
    End If
Next

Application.DisplayAlerts = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

In the above code, I have used a variable TexttoFind, which has been assigned to “2020” in the beginning.

The VBA code then uses the For Next loop in VBA to go through each worksheet and then check the name of each worksheet INSTR function. This function checks whether the worksheet name has the word 2020 in it or not. If it does, it will return a position number where it finds this text (which is 2020 in this case).

And if it doesn’t find the text we are looking for, it returns 0.

This is used with the IF Then condition. So if a sheet name has the text string 2020 in it, it will be split and saved as a separate file. And if it doesn’t have this text string, the IF condition would not be met and nothing would happen.

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• How to Split Multiple Lines in a Cell into a Separate Cells / Columns
• Excel VBA Split Function
• How to Import XML File into Excel | Convert XML to Excel
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