Extract data from excel for input loop in VBA scraping - vba

Question

I am a complete novice in VBA and I'm in way over my head I think but the research necessitates it. I followed a great online tutorial series, which unfortunately didn't help me in solving 1 big problem: Data input.
My goal is to scrape patent data from google patents. To do so, it's pretty convenient that Google patents website is uniquely identified by the patent number. Thus what I want to achieve is the following:
Extract the patent number from a list in excel
Use that number to access the specific webpage
Extract application and publication year of patent, as well as patent number (as check)
Store all in a single excel sheet
Now, I can make 2,3, and 4 work but it's the loop that allows me to extract the patent numbers from excel and put them into my code that I am missing.
Here is the current code:
Private Sub CommandButton4_Click()
Dim obMF As Object
Dim patent As String
Dim grant_date As String
Dim app_date As String
Dim patent_number As String
patent_number = insert.Text ' insert.Text refers to a textbox in my interface
Call gotopat(patent_number, patent, app_date, grant_date)
found.Text = patent
grantdate.Text = grant_date
appdate.Text = app_date
output_row = 1 'Set the output row as 1 (this is where the title is)
Do
DoEvents
output_row = output_row + 1 'Increase output row with 1
Loop Until Sheets("bkcit").Range("B" & output_row) = ""
'Continue loop until that cell ~ Range is blank.
'Once a blank is found, we can put new data in there
'Store data into Worksheet "bkcit"
Sheets("bkcit").Range("B" & output_row) = patent
Sheets("bkcit").Range("C" & output_row) = grant_date
Sheets("bkcit").Range("D" & output_row) = app_date
In this code, found.Text, grantdate.Text, and appdate.Text are sourced from the scraping function which works perfectly. The important things about that function are:
Function gotopat(patent_number As String, patent As String, app_date As String, grant_date As String)
' A Bunch of other stuff
obMF.Navigate ("http://www.google.com/patents/US" & patent_number & "?")
'All the scraping code'
So, I want to replace the patent_number = insert.Text by a loop that looks in my excel sheet bkcit, column A and basically loops through all the unique patent numbers. I tried
input_row = 1
Do
DoEvents
input_row = input_row + 1
Range("C" & input_row) = patent_number
Loop Until Sheets("bkcit").Range("A" & input_row) = ""
But this seems to delete the first patent number in cell A2 and nothing more.
I'm thinking I'm pretty close to a working solution but your help would be fantastic, as always!
Thanks in advance
Simon

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you have a column of patent numbers like this:
And you want to loop through each number and do something to it. Try this:
Sub loopPatents()
Dim patentNumber As Range
Dim patentRange As Range
Set patentRange = Worksheets(1).Range("A2:A10")
For Each patentNumber In patentRange
MsgBox ("Patent number: " & patentNumber)
'Do your stuff with the patent number here
Next patentNumber
End Sub