Compare and Select ranges based off most up-to-date Reading Date VBA - vba

Question

I am working on an excel workbook where the user imports text files into a "Data Importation Sheet", the amount of text files imported is dynamic. See image.
So here is what I need to happen
1) Need to find the most up-to-date Reading Date (in this example 2016)
2) Need to copy and paste the range of Depth values of the most up-to-date Reading Date to a separate sheet (in this example I would want to copy and paste values 1-17.5.
3) Need to check if all other data sets contain this same range of Depth values. For the year 2014 you can see its depth goes from 0.5-17.5. I want to be able to just copy the data at the range of the most up-to-date Reading Date so the range of 1-17.5.
Here is my code to find the most up-to-date Reading date and to copy those depths to the other sheets.
Sub Copy_Depth()
Dim dataws As Worksheet, hiddenws As Worksheet
Dim tempDate As String, mostRecentDate As String
Dim datesRng As Range, recentCol As Range, headerRng As Range, dateRow As Range, cel As Range
Dim lRow As Long
Dim x As Double
Set dataws = Worksheets("Data Importation Sheet")
Set hiddenws = Worksheets("Hidden2")
Set calcws = Worksheets("Incre_Calc_A")
Set headerRng = dataws.Range(dataws.Cells(1, 1), dataws.Cells(1, dataws.Cells(1, Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column))
'headerRng.Select
For Each cel In headerRng
If cel.Value = "Depth" Then
Set dateRow = cel.EntireColumn.Find(What:="Reading Date:", LookIn:=xlValues, lookat:=xlPart)
Set datesRng = dataws.Cells(dateRow.Row + 1, dateRow.Column)
'datesRng.Select
' Find the most recent date
tempDate = Left(datesRng, 10)
If tempDate > mostRecentDate Then
mostRecentDate = tempDate
Set recentCol = datesRng
End If
End If
Next cel
Dim copyRng As Range
With dataws
Set copyRng = .Range(.Cells(2, recentCol.Column), .Cells(.Cells(2, recentCol.Column).End(xlDown).Row, recentCol.Column))
End With
hiddenws.Range(hiddenws.Cells(2, 1), hiddenws.Cells(copyRng.Rows(copyRng.Rows.Count).Row, 1)).Value = copyRng.Value
calcws.Range(calcws.Cells(2, 1), calcws.Cells(copyRng.Rows(copyRng.Rows.Count).Row, 1)).Value = copyRng.Value
Worksheets("Incre_Calc_A").Activate
lRow = Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row
x = Cells(lRow, 1).Value
Cells(lRow + 1, 1) = x + 0.5
End Sub
Any tips/help would be greatly appreciated. I am fairly new to VBA and don't know how to go about comparing the depth ranges! Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Assuming that your datasets are as regularly organised as your screenshot suggests then quite a lot of processing can be done in Excel.
The image below shows a possible approach based on the data shown in your example.
The approach exploits the fact that each data set occupies 7 columns of the importation worksheet. The =ADDRESS() function is used to build text strings which look like cell addresses and these are further manipulated to create text strings which look like range addresses. The approach also assumes that the reading date is always located in the third row following the final row of depth data.
The solution is slightly different to your problem, in that it identifies the common range of depth values across all datasets. For the example in the question this amounts to the same thing as identifying the depth values associated with the latest reading date.
This approach was taken as it is not clear from the question what would happen if, say, a dataset had depth values starting at say 1.5 (so greater than the first value for the latest reading date) or ending at say 17 (so less than the the last value for the latest reading date). The approach can obviously be adapted if these possibilities will never occur.
The table shown in the image above has in its final column, a text representation of the ranges to be copied from the Data Importation Sheet. A simple bit of VBA can read this column, a cell at a time and use the text to assign an appropriate range object to which copy and paste methods can then be applied.
Additional bit of answer
The image above could be set-up as a "helper" worksheet. If there is always the same number of datasets on the Data Importation Worksheet then set up this helper sheet so that the number of rows in Table 2 is equal to this number of datasets. If the number of datasets is variable, then set up the helper sheet so that the number of rows in Table 2 is equal to the maximum number of datasets that is ever likely to be encountered. In this situation, when the number of datasets imported is fewer than this maximum, some rows of Table 2 will be unused and these unused rows will contain meaningless values in some columns.
Your VBA program should be organised to read the value in the value in cell D2 of the helper sheet and then use this to determine how many rows of Table 2 to examine with the rest of your VBA code. This will unused rows (if any) to be ignored.
If your VBA code identifies a value of, say 10, in cell D2 of the helper sheet then you will want your code to read one a time the 10 values in the range Q12:Q21 (so in a loop). Each of these cells holds, as a string, the range containing a single dataset's values and so can be assigned to a Range object using code such as
Set datasetRng = Range(datasetStr)
where datasetStr is the text string read from a cell in Q12:Q21.
Still within the loop, datasetRng can then be copied and pasted to your output worksheet.
Because the same helper worksheet can be re-used for each data importation, you should be able to incorporate it into your automation scheme. No need for copying and pasting formula down rows to create a different helper for each importation, just apply the same helper template to each data importation.
The approach adopted makes as much use of Excel as possible to determine relevant information about the imported data sets and summarises this information within the helper worksheet. This means VBA can be limited to automation of the copy/paste operations on the datasets and its reads information from the helper sheet in determining what to copy for each dataset.
It is of course possible to do everything in VBA but as you indicated you were fairly new to VBA it seemed sensible to tip the balance towards using less VBA and more Excel.
Incidentally, the problem of comparing the depth ranges is not really one of Excel or programming, it is one of analysis - ie looking at a range of cases, figuring out what needs to happen for each case, and distilling this into a set of processing rules (what some would call an algorithm). Only then should attempts be made to implement these processing rules (either via Excel formula or VBA code). I have hinted at my analysis of the problem (finding the common range of depth values across all datasets)and you should be able to track through how I have implemented this in Excel to cater for cases where some datasets might contain Depth values which are less than the minimum of the common range or which are greater than its maximum (or possibly both).
End of additional bit
The formula used are shown in the table below.