I need help with a formatting issue in Excel, which is interfering with the VLOOKUP function in my Excel sheet.
I have two sheets with more than 20,000 column values as lookup, and the same number of values for reference. All the values in both cells are weirdly formatted, some with green triangles at the upper left corner of cells, some are text, etc.
Is there a way in Excel using a macro/VBA to remove or make all formatting similar in both sheets? The reason for VBA is because the person who is going to work with this file needs everything automated and is not familiar with Excel at all. I already have the VLOOKUP function in the cells, I just need to work with the formatting.
Well, I fight with partial lookups this way:
In the items array, I create new empty FIRST column and then place formula
="+"&B2
This will take the content of Cell B2 and add + in the front of it.
When I do vlookup, I add "+" to searcheable value
=VLOOKUP("+"&A6,A:O,2,FALSE)
Therefore, instead of comparing for example Strings and numbers, I compare Strings, by adding "+" in the front.
Another technique, is to kill all formatting:
Select whole column, click DATA-TEXT TO COLUMNS-DELIMITED and then DESELECT ALL DELIMITERS. Click Finish. This will clear your formatting.
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This is the VBA solution you asked for:
Call it from Excel
=GetLookup(G2,A:C)
Here is VBA:
Function GetLookup(LOOKFOR As String, RANGEARRAY As Range) As String
GetLookup = Application.WorksheetFunction.VLookup("+" & LOOKFOR, RANGEARRAY, 3, False)
End Function
Good luck!
I'm assuming the data type in all of the cells is the same, or you want it to all be the same. The following steps will make the cells a uniform type:
Save your workbook, in case this does not do as you require
Select all cells you wish to be of the same cell type
Press Ctrl+1, on the "Number" tab, select the type you wish these cells to take. Press OK.
Open the VBA editor using Alt+F11
Open the immediate window with Ctrl+G
Type the following: for each cell in selection : cell.formula = cell.value : next cell
Press enter (you may have to wait a few seconds).
If you take this action with the same data type (e.g. choose "Text" for both ranges in step 3) on both your ranges you should be "comparing apples with apples" and your VLOOKUP should function as required.
Hope this helps.
Edit: formatting, clarification
Related
I have inherited a massive spreadsheet with many sheets, and many formulas that have a lot of absolute references.
These sheets need to be combined into one, is there an easy way to identify absolute references quickly with VBA?
I was thinking of some conditional formatting for cells that contain "$" but that doesn't work.
Alternatively I figured a script could run through each cell and evaluate it's absolute contents, if it identifies a "$" it then formats the cell and moves on to the next.
Thanks for your time :)
You can easily do this with conditional formatting:
Mark all your data
Select "conditional formatting", "New rule"
Select "Use a formula to determine which cells to format"
Enter the formula =FIND("$",FORMULATEXT(A1))>0 (assuming that the first cell you selected is [A1]. FORMULATEXT will look for the text of the formula of a cell and FIND will search for a $ within that formula.
Do not forget to set the formatting, e.g. a fill color
A simple solution for even basic users:
Ctrl+F (search),
enter search parameter "$" (in this case),
Ensure the drop boxes have selected:
Within: Sheet
Search: By Rows
Look in: Formulas
Uncheck the "Match entire cell contents" checkbox,
click "Find all"
In the list that appears within the search window,
select all of the entries, it will select the entire search group.
Apply formatting to the selection to highlight these cells.
I have scripted out a module that reads data I paste in from a SQL dump, and converts it into a data insert script to SQL. It is working great, only problem is for cells that contain items like:
11-20
instead of filling my value as '11-20', it is converting it to '20-Nov'.
I have adjusted how i read the cell from text to value to value2, Text comes the closest to right (rest do a math calc that tosses my overall sheet off even worse, namely dates). I have also tried such things as a Range("X:X").clear and clearformat as well. This also does not do the trick.
How do I force my string read of this cell to be the literal CSV content, and ignore the formula/calculations that excel is tossing at me?
EDIT:
Thanks to BraX for the solution!
I was unable to accomplish this by copying from one tab to the next within Excel, but i did get it to work by pausing my operation with a message box prompting the user to simply navigate to SQL and put the contents of the data in to the clip board. This works perfectly now!
Cells.Select
Selection.NumberFormat = "#"
MsgBox "Please navigate to SQL and copy your data to be insurted, including headers. When done click OK"
Range("A1").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
Before adding the data to the sheet, set the NumberFormat to # for the affected columns.
Example:
ActiveWorkBook.WorkSheets("Sheet1").Range("A:A").NumberFormat = "#"
That will format the values to Text and prevent them from being interpreted as a Date when the data is added. Once Excel decides it's a date, it's too late.
i am pretty sure all it takes is to format the cells, right click on the range of cells you want formatted as plain text, click "FORMAT CELLS" and under the "NUMBER TAB" it shows the "CATEGORY" of the type of formatting, e.g: "General, Number, Currency, etc" select where it says "Text" and click ok, any text will be evaluated the same way you write it, so even if you write "11-5-18" it will be just that and won't be considered a date or anything.
I have a formula that constructs a vlookup function while drawing the file path from a date input from the user, next I have a macro that takes the results of this formula and pastes them in Cell C6.
=("=" & "IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP($A6," & "'I:\CM\PC\A\TR\AT\"&TEXT(C$5,"yyyy")&"\"&TEXT(C$5,"mmmmmmmmmmm")&"\["&TEXT(C$5,"mmm")&TEXT(C$5,"d")&".xlsm]Violations Count'!$A:$B"&",2,FALSE)),"""",VLOOKUP($A6,"&"'I:\CM\PC\A\TR\AT\"&TEXT(C$5,"yyyy")&"\"&TEXT(C$5,"mmmmmmmmmmm")&"\["&TEXT(C$5,"mmm")&TEXT(C$5,"d")&".xlsm]Violations Count'!$A:$B"&",2,FALSE))")
The trouble I am having is finding a way for VBA to activate the formula instead of having it sit there in a text format as:
=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP($A6,'I:\CM\PC\A\TR\AT\2016\December\[Dec5.xlsm]Violations Count'!$A:$B,2,FALSE)),"",VLOOKUP($A6,'I:\CM\PC\A\TR\AT\2016\December\[Dec5.xlsm]Violations Count'!$A:$B,2,FALSE))
Afterward I just have a macro autofill it down for the other names between column A6:A37.
If anyone can help me with VBA activating the cell, it would be much appreciated.
If you want to get the value of a cell (which might contain a text string) you use something like:
someVariableEtc = Range("A1").Value
If you want to set a Cell's formula using VBA, you would use something like:
Range("C6").Formula = "some text string"
Combining the two, you could come up with something like:
Range("C6").Formula = Range("A1").Value
Look this up. The evaluate function might be what you're looking for. The simplest way to use it is wrapping an expression in square brackets [].
I need to create a button to add to Excel (2010 currently) that will strip all the formatting in that column and just leave plain text. Our current solution is to copy the data into Notepad to strip out the formatting and then copy it back in from Notepad. This works, but is inelegant and would be far easier if I could just create a button to do this within Excel itself. I've seen a few solutions posted but none of them seem to deal with a randomly selected column. Help!
The Range.ClearFormats method seems appropriate here.
With Worksheets("Sheet1")
.Columns(1).ClearFormats 'clear formatting from column A
End With
'for a manually selected group of cells
Selection.ClearFormats 'clear formatting from the cells currently selected
fwiw, the Clear Formats command is available on the ribbon through Home ► Editing ► Clear ► Clear Formats (Alt+H+E+F). You could easily add that command to the QAT rather than create a macro that largely duplicates the command and assign it to a custom button.
Excel already has a button on the Home tab:
Just select the entire column and click Clear Formats
Just to add to Jeeped's answer:
Using this code you'll clear the whole columns formatting (select a random cell, run this code and the whole columns formatting has been cleared)
Sub ClearColumn()
i = ActiveCell.Column
ActiveSheet.Columns(i).ClearFormats
End Sub
This is one that's been killing me and I've tried almost every solution on the Internet.
Here's background. I have an HR model that has each department broken out on separate tabs. I want to run an extract from our payroll system each payroll run and send highlight any updates individually. If someone's title or salary or status changes, I want to have that called out by highlighting the cell.
Each tab uses an INDEX/MATCH lookup to the extract tab to pull in the current information. What I want is if any value changes or is new(new hire, for example), highlight the cells.
I've played with Worksheet_Calculate and Worksheet_Change to no avail. Worksheet_Change doesn't fire because I'm not making the change directly on the sheet and Worksheet_Calculate doesn't have the Target object for to reference. I've tried the following code:
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
Dim updatedCell As Range
Set updatedCell = Range(Target.Dependents.Address)
If Not Intersect(updatedCell, Range("A:A")) Is Nothing Then
updatedCell.Interior.ColorIndex = 3
End If
End Sub
The range I actually need evaluated is A7:R104 but I've been trying to get anything to work when linked to another sheet.
This works fine if formula of target cell is pointing to another cell on same sheet. The moment you point to one on another sheet it doesn't work. I've tried most of the solutions on here with no success. I've even tried putting the Worksheet_Change on the extract sheet and see if I can trigger it that way with no luck.
Is there a recommended solution to triggering a change to a cell for a formula linked to another sheet?
so I just saw this post, I don't know if you've found the solution or are still looking, but:
if you select a cell in sheet 3, you can then go to the home tab, go to "conditional formatting" -highlight cell rules - more rules (at the bottom) - and "use formulas to determine which cells to format" and then put your cursor in the formula box. now, select a cell in sheet 1 (click the sheet1 tab, and click a cell) and you'll notice it should populate the address for sheet1, and the cell u selected. now type <> after that cells address, then select sheet2 and a cell. then click format, and choose a fill color. then ok. if you go to conditional formatting and manage rules it will show there the rule / formula and which cells it applies to.
doing this i was able to select cell D10 in sheet 3, and make it an ugly green if cells in sheet1 and 2 didnt match (I picked which cells) you can also select a range of cells.
thusly, you can apply this rule to whatever dells you want, and if you record a macro of you setting this conditional formatting, you can manitpulate that macro to apply it to a bunch of different cells, and change the ranges. (using loops / variables)