Question

Is it possible to create a Workbook with a custom name without saving it to disk? I want to avoid the default “Workbook x” names but I don’t want to require the user to save the workbook. If I save it automatically in some temporary, the user won’t get the “Save As…” dialog if he clicks on “Save”, which may be confusing.

Answer 1

Simply create the workbook and don’t save it so when the user tries to save it, the user will get a “Save As” Prompt. And if the user tries to close it, then the user will get a prompt whether the users want to save (Again a Save As dialog) the file before closing. Now the appearance of this prompt will depend on the fact that you have made some changes to the newly created workbook.

For example

Sub Sample()
    Dim wb As Workbook

    Set wb = Workbooks.Add
End Sub

By default the workbook will be named as “Book*” but that really shouldn’t matter as the user will get a chance to do do a “Save As”

FOLLOWUP

By pressing Ctrl + S. It would show the Save As… dialog just as if the workbook had never been saved.

Though I mentioned that there is only one way that I can think of but while working on the code, I came up with 2 options 🙂

WAY 1

a) Create a new workbook

b) Save it as say, JAN 2012.XLSM, to user’s Temp directory

c) Change the file properties to Readonly

d) Now when the user presses CTRL+S, Excel will prompt a Save As

Option Explicit

Private Declare Function GetTempPath Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetTempPathA" _
(ByVal nBufferLength As Long, ByVal lpBuffer As String) As Long

Private Const MAX_PATH As Long = 260

Sub Sample()
    Dim wb As Workbook

    Set wb = Workbooks.Add

    With wb
        .SaveAs Filename:=TempPath & "JAN 2012.xlsm" _
        , FileFormat:=xlOpenXMLWorkbookMacroEnabled, CreateBackup:=False

       '.SaveAs Filename:=TempPath & "JAN 2012.xlsx" _
       , FileFormat:=xlOpenXMLWorkbook, CreateBackup:=False

        .ChangeFileAccess Mode:=xlReadOnly, WritePassword:="admin"
    End With
End Sub

Function TempPath() As String
    TempPath = String$(MAX_PATH, Chr$(0))
    GetTempPath MAX_PATH, TempPath
    TempPath = Replace(TempPath, Chr$(0), "")
End Function

WAY 2 (Complicated way of doing it)

a) Create a new workbook

b) Save it as say, JAN 2012.XLSM, to user’s Temp directory

c) Inject a code to disable Ctrl + S and only allow Save As