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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T19:38:28+00:00

Suppose I have the following set up in a WinForms application: Dim ExcelApp As

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Suppose I have the following set up in a WinForms application:

Dim ExcelApp As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application
Dim ExcelWorkbook As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook
Dim wksDataVals As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet

ExcelApp.Visible = False

Basically, I have an invisible instance of Excel running in the background with a workbook open in it called ExcelWorkbook and a sheet the app is manipulating called wksDataVals. And the user is manipulating this sheet (and others) via the userform and seeing some outputs based upon those manipulations.

Now, on my form I have a button Show Excel Sheet where, once the user clicks it, I want to show them a copy of wksDataVals in a new, standalone, workbook while keeping the original hidden in the background for further data manipulation. I believe that I need to do this by creating a new instance of Excel since I want to keep this one hidden.

Is there a better way to do this than:

  1. Saving the worksheet
  2. Creating a new (visible) instance of Excel
  3. Re-opening the worksheet in that instance

(Which can create an issue with the worksheet now only being read-only since I want it to stay open in the other Excel instance) – I know I can overcome this by re-saving the worksheet as a new name AGAIN, but this all seems like overkill.

Any ideas about how I can accomplish this in the easiest way?? – Maybe there’s a way to save the workbook / sheet internally and feed it to a new Excel instance rather than making Excel try and open a saved sheet??

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As an answer to my own question in case anyone out there happens to have the same question come up for them (please, experts, if you have a better way, let me know), what I ended up doing was:

    1. Create a new instance of Excel
    2. Create a blank new workbook in that instance
    3. Copy the Range I cared about from the hidden sheet
    4. Pasted it (Values and formatting in my case was all I wanted) onto the new workbook
    5. Made the new instance of Excel visible
    6. Set the reference to the new app instance, workbook, sheet, etc = nothing, so now it was no longer connected to my program.

    Seemed to do the trick wonderfully.

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