You receive a "Subscript out of range" error message when you use HPageBreaks or VPageBreaks.Location in Excel

Symptoms

When you use the Location property or Location.Address of vertical or horizontal page breaks in a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro, you may receive the following error message:

Cause

This problem may occur if the following conditions are true:

• The active cell is above the horizontal page break or to the left of the vertical page break that is referred to by the HPageBreaks or VPageBreaks index.

• The vertical or horizontal page break location is off the screen to the right of the visible window or below the visible window of the workbook.

• You use a Visual Basic for Applications macro in Microsoft Excel similar to the following code:
  

  Sub TestHorizontal()
      ActiveSheet.Range("CZ1000").Value = 1
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.HPageBreaks.Count
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.HPageBreaks(1).Location.Address
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.HPageBreaks(2).Location.Address
  End Sub
  
  Sub TestVertical()
      ActiveSheet.Range("CZ1000").Value = 1
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.VPageBreaks.Count
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.VPageBreaks(1).Location.Address
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.VPageBreaks(2).Location.Address
      MsgBox ActiveSheet.VPageBreaks(3).Location.Address
  End Sub
  

Workaround

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To prevent this problem, add code to select the last cell used in the worksheet before the code uses the Location property of horizontal or vertical page breaks. For example, use the following code to select the end cell, use the Location property, and then reselect the original active cell:

Sub CheckPageBreaks()

    'Set object "currcell" equal to active cell.
    Set currcell = ActiveCell

    'Select the last cell on the worksheet that has data.
    Range("IV65536").Select

    'Include code with Location property here.
    x = ActiveSheet.HPageBreaks(2).Location.Address
    MsgBox x
    'Example sets x equal to address of second horizontal page break.
    'Then message box displays the address of the page break.

    'Select original active cell.
    currcell.Select

End Sub

After the Location property is calculated, you may again select the original active cell. If you use code to scroll between the first and last cell, or select the last cell and immediately reselect the starting cell, the error may still occur. The screen must redraw and the Location property be calculated for the workaround to be effective. If you use the above code with

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

to prevent screen redraw, the problem still occurs.

Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

More Information

If you use the Count method with the VPageBreaks or HPageBreaks property, you may receive a result of zero. This occurs under the conditions listed in the "Cause" section. If a page break is visible, the Count method may give the correct answer. The Count method for vertical or horizontal page breaks may give the expected result if a page break is near the visible part of the workbook window. The workaround given earlier can be used to obtain the expected count.

Page breaks that are to the right of the workbook window or below the workbook window may enable the Count method to work and that page break to be located, if the distance from the window to the page break is less than one-half the distance between page breaks.

References

For more information about how to trap errors in a macro, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

213637 How to use "On Error" to handle errors in a macro