How to clear filters when opening, saving or closing workbook in Excel?
Supposing there are multiple filtered worksheets in your workbook, for clearing these filters, you have to check for the filtered list in different worksheets and then manually clear them one by one. That’s annoying! In this article, we will show you methods of clearing filters when opening, saving or closing a workbook in Excel.
Clear filters when opening workbook in Excel
Clear filters when saving workbook in Excel
Clear filters when closing/exiting workbook in Excel
Clear filters when opening workbook in Excel

This section is talking about clearing filters in all worksheets when opening a workbook. Please do as follows.
1. In a workbook you need to automatically clear all filters when opening, please press the Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please double click ThisWorkbook in the left Project pane, and then copy and paste the below VBA code into the ThisWorkbook (Code) window. See screenshot:
VBA code: Clear all filters when opening workbook
Private Sub Workbook_Open() Dim ws As Worksheet For Each ws In Worksheets If ws.AutoFilterMode Then ws.AutoFilterMode = False End If Next ws End Sub
3. Press the Alt + Q keys to exit the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
4. Click File > Save As. In the popping up Save As dialog box, specify a folder to save this workbook, name it as you need in the File name box, then select Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook option from the Save as type drop-down list, and finally click the Save button.
From now on, when opening this Macro-Enabled Workbook, all filters in this workbook will be cleared automatically.
Clear filters when saving workbook in Excel
You can clear all filters from current workbook each time you saving it.
1. In the workbook you need to automatically clear all filters from, please press the Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please double click ThisWorkbook in the left Project pane, and then copy and paste the below VBA code into the ThisWorkbook (Code) window. See screenshot:
VBA code: Clear filters when saving workbook
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeSave(ByVal SaveAsUI As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean) Dim ws As Worksheet For Each ws In Worksheets If ws.AutoFilterMode Then ws.AutoFilterMode = False End If Next ws End Sub
3. Press Alt + Q keys to exit the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
From now on, when saving the workbook, all filters will be cleared automatically.
Clear filters when closing/exiting workbook in Excel
The last section, we will show you how to clear all filters across worksheets when closing or exiting the workbook.
1. Open the workbook you need to automatically clear all filters from, then press the Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please double click ThisWorkbook in the left Project pane, and then copy and paste the below VBA code into the ThisWorkbook (Code) window. See screenshot:
VBA code: Clear all filters across worksheets when closing/exiting workbook
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean) Dim ws As Worksheet For Each ws In Worksheets If ws.AutoFilterMode Then ws.AutoFilterMode = False End If Next ws End Sub
Note: If you just want to clear filters in current worksheet, please use the below VBA code.
VBA code: Clear filter in active sheet when closing workbook
Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean) If ActiveSheet.AutoFilterMode Then ActiveSheet.AutoFilterMode = False End If End Sub
3. Press Alt + Q keys to exit the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
From now on, all filters will be cleared automatically after clicking the Close button in the workbook.
Related articles:
- How to clear filter cache (old items) from Pivot Table in Excel?
- How to clear filters from all worksheets in active workbook in Excel?
- How to filter data based on checkbox in Excel?
- How to fill series of numbers in a filtered list column in Excel?
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