Finding a string embedded with several strings in a single cell - vba

Question

Working on a large macro to automate an end of day email process that involves sending emails to different customers. Everything is working fairly well except in the several instances that some firms have different emails for different employees. It would be simple if these employees were the only ones that would be sent to that email, but that is of course not the case.
I'm struggling to find a solution to finding the names and referencing the email. But referencing multiple names without knowing how many names it could be ahead of time (meaning in the future a firm could have 10 employees with the same email confirmation and some may have as little as 1 (for those that require separate emails per employee)). Would I use an array for this and test against the array? I would also need to store the employee names in order to ensure duplicates aren't created. See Text example and code below:
The names are stored in a sheet named emailMaster in this format say starting in cell(1,3) (Joe GoodGuy; James Johanson; Jimmy TheHat (All encapsulated in one cell)) and the email they correspond to is found at .Offset(0,1). To clarify, these gentlemen may work for the firm "CodersUnited", but their may be another group from the firm "CodersUnited", who require a different email address for their end of day receipts and they could be in cell(1,5) (Jimmy John; Franky TwoToes; Jimmy Hendrix) and their corresponding email found in .Offset(0,1).
Row ____________________C____________________ __D___ ___________________E____________________ __F__
1 Joe GoodGuy; James Johanson; Jimmy TheHat Emails Jimmy John; Frank TwoToes; Jimmy Hendrix Email
The solution below only works if their is one name corresponding to one email. There needs to be multiple names corresponding to one email.
'Gets firm name
If firmName = emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 1) Then
continue = False
cFirm = firmName
iFirm = emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 2)
If IsEmpty(emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 4)) = True Then
firmEmail = emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 3)
'Tests for separate employee emails
ElseIf emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 4) = "Yes" Then
empSeparate = True
'Captures separate emp email
Set empTestFinder = emailMaster.Rows(emrow_num).Find(empName)
empFinder = empTestFinder.Address
firmEmail = emailMaster.Range(empFinder).Offset(0, 1)
Else
MsgBox ("Firm designated as different emails for employees. Either change designation of firm or add employee. Contact dev for more assistance.")
Exit Sub
End If
End If

Answer 1

In my view you are mixing three tasks:
modelling your data
determining a convenient method of holding that data in Excel
determining a convenient method of holding that data in VBA variables
You need to tackle these tasks in sequence but be willing to revert to a previous task if you encounter problems attempting the current task..
Below is a data model which I have deduced from your question. This model does not conform to any standard modelling notation but, if you are not a data modeller, I think you will find this notation easier to understand.
You need to send emails to all your customers. I have shown three example customers. At Customer1 there is only one person you send emails to who has there own email address. At Customer2, there are three people to whom you send emails who each have their own email address. Customer3 is more complicated. Person13 has their own address but the other contacts share addresses. For example, EmailAddr5 is shared by Person5, Person6 and Person7.
Customer1────EmailAddr1────Person1
Customer2─┬──EmailAddr2────Person2
├──EmailAddr3────Person3
└──EmailAddr4────Person4
Customer3─┬──EmailAddr5─┬──Person5
│ ├──Person6
│ └──Person7
├──EmailAddr6─┬──Person8
│ ├──Person9
│ ├──Person10
│ ├──Person11
│ └──Person12
└──EmailAddr7────Person13
Is this a correct representation of your data? I would summarise this as:
There are 1 or many PERSONs per EMAILADDR
There are 1 or many EMAILADDRs per CUSTOMER
If you are not familiar with modelling data, this may be confusing at first but I believe that with a little study it will become clear.
The question you need to answer is: “Is this a complete description of my data?” Only when you are convinced there are no special cases not covered by this model can you proceed to Task 2.
Unless your final model is much more complicated than mine, I do not believe you will need two or more worksheets to hold this data. So, task 2 is to map your data model onto an Excel worksheet.
During task2, the person to consider is the user who will create and maintain this data. For example, I would have thought holding multiple people in a single cell would be awkward to maintain. How does this data arrive? Does Acme Supplies tell you to contact John Smith whose email address is Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com or do they tell you use Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com to contact any of: Angela Brown, Cherry White and John Smith? If data arrives as “name – address”, the model above may be correct but inconvenient. Would this be a convenient arrangement of the data for the user to maintain?
Acme Supplies | Brown, Angela | Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com
Acme Supplies | Chester, Neal | Admin#AcmeSuppliers.Com
Acme Supplies | Smith, John | Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com
Acme Supplies | White, Cherry | Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com
With this arrangement, there is a row per person per company.
If you really think your data model is correct, how about:
Acme Supplies|Admin#AcmeSuppliers.Com|Chester, Neal|Sales#AcmeSuppliers.Com|Brown, Angela|Smith, John|White, Cherry|
where I am using vertical lines to represent cell boundaries.
What I done is take:
Customer3─┬──EmailAddr5─┬──Person5
│ ├──Person6
│ └──Person7
├──EmailAddr6─┬──Person8
│ ├──Person9
│ ├──Person10
│ ├──Person11
│ └──Person12
└──EmailAddr7────Person13
and arrange it as:
Customer3|EmailAddr5|Person5|Person6|Person7|EmailAddr6|Person8|Person9| and so on
This could work because every address contains the symbol “#” while no name contains this symbol.
As you develop the mapping from the data model to Excel, you may need to revise the data model. Your original model may be technically correct but implementation in Excel may be inconvenient. Provided your revised model can handle any combination of company, address and name you can envisage and providing that revised model maps cleanly to Excel you will be all right.
Lastly, task 3 is to map the Excel worksheet to VBA variables. This depends on how you need to process the data. For example, you might have a list like:
CompanyA, PersonZ
CompanyB, PersonY
CompanyB, PersonX
: :
With this it might be easier to leave the data in the worksheet and have code like this:
For each line of list
Search for Person
If not found
Report “No such person”
Else
Record row on which first Person found
Do While True
If Person belongs to Company Then
Generate email
Exit Do
End If
Search for next Person
If row for Person is the row for the first Person Then
Report “No such person”
Exit Do
End If
Loop
End If
Next
I think the above is as much as I can offer because there is too much uncertainty about your requirement. This may be enough for you to solve your own problem. If not, you need update your question clarify your requirement.

Answer 2

Perhaps you would like a function like the below:
Function FoundEMail(groupArray As Variant, emailArray As Variant) As Boolean
Dim PersonInGroup As Variant, PersonInEMail As Variant, PersonFound As Boolean
For Each PersonInGroup In groupArray
PersonFound = False
For Each PersonInEMail In emailArray
PersonFound = StrConv(Trim(PersonInGroup), vbUpperCase) = StrConv(Trim(PersonInEMail), vbUpperCase)
If PersonFound Then Exit For
Next PersonInEMail
If Not PersonFound Then Exit Function
Next PersonInGroup
FoundEMail = True
End Function
So instead of If firmName = emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 1) Then you might have something like If FoundEMail(Split(firmName,";"),Split(emailMaster.Cells(emrow_num, 1),";")) Then