How to prevent others from inserting worksheet in Excel?

Supposing, you have a workbook which will sent to other users for viewing or checking its content, however, you don’t want others to insert any new worksheets to this workbook for preventing the workbook from becoming messy. In this article, I will talk about how to prevent others from inserting worksheets in a workbook.

Prevent others from inserting worksheet with Protect Workbook function

Prevent others from inserting worksheet with VBA code

Prevent others from inserting worksheet with Protect Workbook function

Excel provides a feature – Protect Workbook for you, with it, you can protect the workbook structure which will not be inserted, deleted, renamed or do other operations. Please do as follows:

1. Go to click Review > Protect Workbook, see screenshot:

2. In the Protect Structure and Windows dialog box, check Structure option, and enter your password into the text box, click OK to show the Confirm Password dialog, and reenter your password. See screenshots:

3. Then click OK to close the dialogs, and now when you insert new worksheet in this workbook, the insert worksheet feature will not be available.

Note: With this function, the following grey items enable to use in this workbook, too.

Prevent others from inserting worksheet with VBA code

If you just want to prevent others from inserting worksheets, but also can do others operations, the above method has its limitation. Here, the following VBA code can do you a favor.

1. Open your workbook which you want to disable to insert worksheets.

2. Then hold down the ALT + F11 keys, and it opens the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

3. In the left VBAProject pane, double click ThisWorkbook to open the Module, then copy and paste the following code.

VBA code: prevent others from inserting worksheet

Private Sub Workbook_NewSheet(ByVal Sh As Object)
'Update 20140623
With Application
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Sh.Delete
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End With
 MsgBox "disable to add sheets"
End Sub

4. Then save and close this code, return to the workbook, and now, when you try to insert a new worksheet into this workbook, a warning box will pop out to remind you can’t insert sheets. See screenshot:

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