Do seaching in excel on typing - vba

Question

I am dealing with data input. Every time before I input one record, I need to search and locate one cell in about 5000 rows. I am thinking if it is possible to do the search while typing instead of using the search function in excel. My idea is to capture the keypress event of a spreadsheet, if it is a character (letter 'A' to 'Z' or 'a' to 'z'), append it to a string called searchVal do the search immediate with a function. When the user press ESC, it will clean up the searchVal. First of all, I got the following code from online, trying to capture the ESC keydown
Private searchVal As String
Private Sub Workbook_Activate()
Application.OnKey "ESC", "CleanSearchKey"
End Sub
Private Sub Workbook_Deactivate()
Application.OnKey "ESC"
End Sub
Sub CleanSearchKey()
searchVal = ""
MsgBox "CleanSearchKey"
End Sub
But his code doesn't work, it seems that the CleanSearchKey never triggered. As for capturing the key down for 'A' to 'Z' and 'a' to 'z', I don't want know how to capture it in a sheet so I add an inputbox on sheet1, assigned the following macro to the inputbox
Sub TextBox1_KeyPress(ByVal KeyAscii As MSForms.ReturnInteger)
If (KeyAscii >= 65 And KeyAscii <= 90) Or (KeyAscii >= 97 And KeyAscii <= 122) Then
searchVal = searchVal & KeyAscii
Else
KeyAscii = 0
End If
End Sub
But it then said "Compile error: User-defined type not defined". So what is the right way to capture the key on a sheet? Thanks.

Answer 1

The code you added for a TextBox is only applicable to a TextBox which appears on a UserForm object. I don't think text boxes on worksheets respond to events like KeyPress.
That said, you could easily configure a simple userform to do this.
I modified your code a little bit. I think this should get you started. In a normal code module, do a procedure like this which will launch the UserForm. This will allow you to show the form from the Macros ribbon menu. Otherwise, you will have to invoke it manually from the Immediate Window or by pressing F5 in the VBE.
Sub ShowForm()
UserForm1.Show vbModeless
End Sub
Create a UserForm, and add a textbox. Its default name should be TextBox1, if it is not, then make sure to change it. In the userForm's code module, do this:
Option Explicit
Dim searchVal As String
Sub TextBox1_KeyPress(ByVal KeyAscii As MSForms.ReturnInteger)
searchVal = TextBox1.Value
If (KeyAscii >= 65 And KeyAscii <= 90) Or (KeyAscii >= 97 And KeyAscii <= 122) Then
searchVal = searchVal & Chr(KeyAscii)
TextBox1.Value = searchVal
Call FindValue
End If
If KeyAscii = 27 Then 'ESC
searchVal = vbNullString
TextBox1.Value = vbNullString
Else:
KeyAscii = 0
End If
End Sub
Sub FindValue()
Dim rngFound as Range
With ActiveSheet
set rngFound = .Cells.Find(searchVal)
End With
If rngFound Is Nothing Then
MsgBox searchVal & " not found!"
Else
MsgBox searchVal & " found at " & rngFound.Address
End If
End Sub