Stopping Excel Macro executution when pressing Esc won't work

user_534056 0
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I'm running excel 2007 on XP.

Is there a way to stop a macro from running during its execution other than pressing escape? Usually if I think I created an infinate loop or otherwise messed something up I hit escape and it throws an error but the macro stops.

This time (and I've done it before but not this badly), I set up a msgbox for some quick debugging. Turns out it had to loop about 6000 times, which made means I had to "OK" 6000 message boxes, which took several minutes. I didn't save before running (another mistake) so I couldn't open task manager to exit.

Is there another way to stop the execution of a macro in case I goof up like this again?

terminate vba excel
11 Answers

Sometimes, the right set of keys (Pause, Break or ScrLk) are not available on the keyboard (mostly happens with laptop users) and pressing Esc 2, 3 or multiple times doesn't halt the macro too.

I got stuck too and eventually found the solution in accessibility feature of Windows after which I tried all the researched options and 3 of them worked for me in 3 different scenarios.

Step #01: If your keyboard does not have a specific key, please do not worry and open the 'OnScreen Keyboard' from Windows Utilities by pressing Win + U.

Step #02: Now, try any of the below option and of them will definitely work depending on your system architecture i.e. OS and Office version

  • Ctrl + Pause
  • Ctrl + ScrLk
  • Esc + Esc (Press twice consecutively)

You will be put into break mode using the above key combinations as the macro suspends execution immediately finishing the current task. For eg. if it is pulling the data from web then it will halt immediately before execting any next command but after pulling the data, following which one can press F5 or F8 to continue the debugging.

user_34681390

I've found that sometimes whem I open a second Excel window and run a macro on that second window, the execution of the first one stops. I don't know why it doesn't work all the time, but you may try.

user_29747180

ESC and CTRL-BREAK did not work for me just now. But CTRL-ESC worked!? No idea why, but I thought I would throw it out there in case it helps someone else. (I had forgotten i = i + 1 in my loop...)

user_116494590

Just Keep pressing ESC key. It will stop the VBA. This methods works when you get infinite MsgBox s

user_137840050

My laptop did not have Break nor Scr Lock, so I somehow managed to make it work by pressing Ctrl + Function + Right Shift (to activate 'pause').

user_134147950
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