Force a screen update in Excel VBA

My Excel tool performs a long task, and I'm trying to be kind to the user by providing a progress report in the status bar, or in some cell in the sheet, as shown below. But the screen doesn't refresh, or stops refreshing at some point (e.g. 33%). The task eventually completes but the progress bar is useless.

What can I do to force a screen update?

For i=1 to imax ' imax is usually 30 or so
    fractionDone=cdbl(i)/cdbl(imax)
    Application.StatusBar = Format(fractionDone, "0%") & "done..."
    ' or, alternatively:
    ' statusRange.value = Format(fractionDone, "0%") & "done..."

    ' Some code.......

Next i

I'm using Excel 2003.

Add a DoEvents function inside the loop, see below.

You may also want to ensure that the Status bar is visible to the user and reset it when your code completes.

Sub ProgressMeter()

Dim booStatusBarState As Boolean
Dim iMax As Integer
Dim i As Integer

iMax = 10000

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
''//Turn off screen updating

    booStatusBarState = Application.DisplayStatusBar
''//Get the statusbar display setting

    Application.DisplayStatusBar = True
''//Make sure that the statusbar is visible

    For i = 1 To iMax ''// imax is usually 30 or so
        fractionDone = CDbl(i) / CDbl(iMax)
        Application.StatusBar = Format(fractionDone, "0%") & " done..."
        ''// or, alternatively:
        ''// statusRange.value = Format(fractionDone, "0%") & " done..."
        ''// Some code.......

        DoEvents
        ''//Yield Control

    Next i

    Application.DisplayStatusBar = booStatusBarState
''//Reset Status bar display setting

    Application.StatusBar = False
''//Return control of the Status bar to Excel

    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
''//Turn on screen updating

End Sub

Text boxes in worksheets are sometimes not updated when their text or formatting is changed, and even the DoEvent command does not help.

As there is no command in Excel to refresh a worksheet in the way a user form can be refreshed, it is necessary to use a trick to force Excel to update the screen.

The following commands seem to do the trick:

- ActiveSheet.Calculate    
- ActiveWindow.SmallScroll    
- Application.WindowState = Application.WindowState

Put a call to DoEvents in the loop.

This will affect performance, so you might want to only call it on each, say, 10th iteration.
However, if you only have 30, that's hardly an issue.

Specifically, if you are dealing with a UserForm, then you might try the Repaint method. You might encounter an issue with DoEvents if you are using event triggers in your form. For instance, any keys pressed while a function is running will be sent by DoEvents The keyboard input will be processed before the screen is updated, so if you are changing cells on a spreadsheet by holding down one of the arrow keys on the keyboard, then the cell change event will keep firing before the main function finishes.

A UserForm will not be refreshed in some cases, because DoEvents will fire the events; however, Repaint will update the UserForm and the user will see the changes on the screen even when another event immediately follows the previous event.

In the UserForm code it is as simple as:

Me.Repaint