Microsoft Excel Tutorial: Understanding Excel Macros: Clearing the Undo Stack Misconception.

Welcome to episode 1904 of the MrExcel podcast. In this episode, we will be discussing a common misconception about macros in Excel. Many people believe that every time a macro is run, the undo stack is cleared. However, as we will see, this is not always the case.

In yesterday’s episode, we demonstrated an event handler macro that automatically wrote data to a column when a change was made in another column. We were going to record an addendum to that episode, warning about the potential issue with event handler macros. Traditionally, it is believed that every time a macro is run, the undo stack is cleared. However, as we will see, this is not always true.

To demonstrate this, we were going to delete and overwrite some data and then try to undo it. However, to our surprise, the undo function was still working. Upon further research, we discovered that the undo stack is only cleared when the macro writes something to the worksheet. If the macro only performs analysis and does not make any changes to the worksheet, the undo stack remains intact.

This means that if your macro only makes changes based on certain criteria, such as a specific column or value, the undo stack will not be cleared unless those criteria are met. This was a revelation for me, as I had always believed that any macro would clear the undo stack. But now we know that this is not the case. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the MrExcel podcast, and we’ll see you next time for another informative netcast.

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Table of Contents:
(00:00) Every Macro Does Not Clear UnDo Stack
(00:16) Event Handler Macro Explanation
(00:28) Warning about Event Handler Macros
(00:40) Traditional Belief about Clearing Undo Stack
(00:50) Demonstration of Undo Functionality
(01:02) Unexpected Undo Behavior
(01:14) Research and Explanation of Undo Stack Rule
(01:48) Analysis vs. Writing to Worksheet
(02:17) Misconception about Clearing Undo Stack
(02:30) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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