Excel VBA with single search criteria, loop for all distinct values - vba

Question

I am getting this error message when I run the macro:
Run-time error '6': Overflow
I have two worksheets; Search and Data. The 'Data' worksheet contains two columns, column A with numbers I want to search through and column B with an alphanumeric value I want to copy and paste into the 'Search' worksheet when a number match is found. Because a number I am searching for can be listed an unknown number of times I want a macro to loop through to find all of the instances, copy the value to its immediate right and paste it into the 'Search' worksheet in cell D3 and going down a row for multiple instances of the number being found.
The number I am searching for is found in cell B3 on the 'Search' worksheet.
This is a sample of what the 'Data' worksheet looks like:
ID ISS_ID
108143 136KQV4
108143 173HBK3
108143 136KQX0
109728 7805JM1
109706 7805JM1
102791 23252T4
105312 6477LZ6
Here is the code that I have now:
Sub Acct_Search()
Dim searchResult As Range
Dim x As Integer
x = 3
' Search for "Activity" and store in Range
Set searchResult = Worksheets("Data").Range("A1:A3500").Find(What:=Worksheets("Search").Range("B3"), _
LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
SearchDirection:=xlNext, MatchCase:=False, _
SearchFormat:=False)
' Store the address of the first occurrence of this word
firstAddress = searchResult.Address
Do
' Set the value in the O column, using the row number and column number
Worksheets("Search").Cells(x, 4) = searchResult.Offset(0, 1).Value
' Increase the counter to go to the next row
x = x + 1
' Find the next occurrence of "Activity"
Set searchResult = Cells.FindNext(searchResult)
' Check if a value was found and that it is not the first value found
Loop While Not searchResult Is Nothing And firstAddress <> searchResult.Address
End Sub
When I Debug it points to the x = x + 1 line. Right now it is able to copy and paste the first value without issue but it is after that point that the error comes into play.

Answer 1

Your problem changed because you are not resetting the origin point of the search with the After:=... parameter of the Range.FindNext Method. Yes, you are passing in searchResult but it was not accepting it as the After:= parameter.
When I ran your code, I was thrown into an infinite loop due to the FindNext always finding the same second instance. This explains the integer coughing at being incremented above 2¹⁵. When it was changed to a long, that gave something else time to choke.
After I changed one line to definitively include the named parameter, everything cleared up.
Set searchResult = Cells.FindNext(After:=searchResult)
This was reproducible simply by adding/removing the parameter designation. It seems that the Cells.FindNext(searchResult) was finding Search!B3 and since that wasn't the firstAddress, it just kept looping on the same Search!B3. It wasn't until I forced after:=searchResult that the .FindNext adjusted itself. It's times like these I think fondly of my C/C++ days without this wallowing overhead.
I've gone through your code and added a With ... End With block that should discourage any questionable parentage.
Sub Acct_Search()
Dim searchResult As Range, firstAddress As String
Dim x As Long, ws As Worksheet
x = 3
Set ws = Worksheets("Search")
' Search for "Activity" and store in Range
With Worksheets("Data").Range("A1:A3500")
Set searchResult = .Find(What:=ws.Range("B3"), LookIn:=xlFormulas, After:=.Cells(.Rows.Count, .Columns.Count), _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False)
' Store the address of the first occurrence of this word
firstAddress = searchResult.Address
Do
' Set the value in the O column, using the row number and column number
ws.Cells(x, 4) = searchResult.Offset(0, 1).Value
' Increase the counter to go to the next row
x = x + 1
' Find the next occurrence of "Activity"
Set searchResult = .FindNext(After:=searchResult)
'Debug.Print searchResult.Address(0, 0, external:=True)
' Check if a value was found and that it is not the first value found
Loop While Not searchResult Is Nothing And firstAddress <> searchResult.Address
End With
Set ws = Nothing
End Sub
I've left the After:= parameter designation in although it is no longer needed.

Answer 2

Change
Dim x As Integer
to
Dim x As Long