Stopping Excel Macro executution when pressing Esc won't work

Use CRTL+BREAK to suspend execution at any point. You will be put into break mode and can press F5 to continue the execution or F8 to execute the code step-by-step in the visual debugger.

Of course this only works when there is no message box open, so if your VBA code constantly opens message boxes for some reason it will become a little tricky to press the keys at the right moment.

You can even edit most of the code while it is running.

Use Debug.Print to print out messages to the Immediate Window in the VBA editor, that's way more convenient than MsgBox.

Use breakpoints or the Stop keyword to automatically halt execution in interesting areas.

You can use Debug.Assert to halt execution conditionally.

CTRL + SCR LK (Scroll Lock) worked for me.

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.