pulling out data from a colums in Excel - vba

Question

I have the following Data in Excel.
CHM0123456 SRM0123:01
CHM0123456 SRM0123:02
CHM0123456 SRM0256:12
CHM0123456 SRM0123:03
CHM0123457 SRM0789:01
CHM0123457 SRM0789:02
CHM0123457 SRM0789:03
CHM0123457 SRM0789:04
What I need to do is pull out all the relevent SRM numbers that relate to a single CHM ref. now I have a formular that will do some thing like this
=INDEX($C$2:$C$6, SMALL(IF($B$8=$B$2:$B$6, ROW($B$2:$B$6)-MIN(ROW($B$2:$B$6))+1, ""), ROW(A1)))
however this is a bit untidy and I really want to produce this same using short vb script, do i jsut have to right a loop that will run though and check each row in turn.
For x = 1 to 6555
if Ax = Chm123456
string = string + Bx
else
next
which should give me a final string of
SRM0123:01,SRM123:02,SRM0256:12,SRM0123:03
to use with how i want.
Or is ther a neater way to do this ?
Cheers
Aaron
my current code
For x = 2 To 6555
If Cells(x, 1).Value = "CHM0123456" Then
outstring = outstring + vbCr + Cells(x, 2).Value
End If
Next
MsgBox (outstring)
End Function

Answer 1

I'm not sure what your definition of 'neat' is, but here is a VBA function that I consider very neat and also flexible and it's lightning fast (10k+ entires with no lag). You pass it the CHM you want to look for, then the range to look in. You can pass a third optional paramater to set how each entry is seperated. So in your case you could write (assuming your list is :
=ListUnique(B2, B2:B6555)
You can also use Char(10) as the third parameter to seperat by line breaks, etc.
Function ListUnique(ByVal search_text As String, _
ByVal cell_range As range, _
Optional seperator As String = ", ") As String
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim result As String
Dim i as Long
Dim cell As range
Dim keys As Variant
Dim dict As Object
Set dict = CreateObject("scripting.dictionary")
On Error Resume Next
For Each cell In cell_range
If cell.Value = search_text Then
dict.Add cell.Offset(, 1).Value, 1
End If
Next
keys = dict.keys
For i = 0 To UBound(keys)
result = result & (seperator & keys(i))
Next
If Len(result) <> 0 Then
result = Right$(result, (Len(result) - Len(seperator)))
End If
ListUnique = result
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Function
How it works: It simple loops through your range looking for the search_string you give it. If it finds it, it adds it to a dictionary object (which will eliminate all dupes). You dump the results in an array then create a string out of them. Technically you can just pass it "B:B" as the search array if you aren't sure where the end of the column is and this function will still work just fine (1/5th of a second for scanning every cell in column B with 1000 unique hits returned).

Answer 2

Another solution would be to do an advancedfilter for Chm123456 and then you could copy those to another range. If you get them in a string array you can use the built-in excel function Join(saString, ",") (only works with string arrays).
Not actual code for you but it points you in a possible direction that can be helpful.
OK, this might be pretty fast for a ton of data. Grabbing the data for each cell takes a ton of time, it is better to grab it all at once. The the unique to paste and then grab the data using
vData=rUnique
where vData is a variant and rUnique is the is the copied cells. This might actually be faster than grabbing each data point point by point (excel internally can copy and paste extremely fast). Another option would be to grab the unique data without having the copy and past happen, here's how:
dim i as long
dim runique as range, reach as range
dim sData as string
dim vdata as variant
set runique=advancedfilter(...) 'Filter in place
set runique=runique.specialcells(xlCellTypeVisible)
for each reach in runique.areas
vdata=reach
for i=lbound(vdata) to ubound(vdata)
sdata=sdata & vdata(i,1)
next l
next reach
Personally, I would prefer the internal copy paste then you could go through each sheet and then grab the data at the very end (this would be pretty fast, faster than looping through each cell). So going through each sheet.
dim wks as worksheet
for each wks in Activeworkbook.Worksheets
if wks.name <> "CopiedToWorksheet" then
advancedfilter(...) 'Copy to bottom of list, so you'll need code for that
end if
next wks
vdata=activeworkbook.sheets("CopiedToWorksheet").usedrange
sData=vdata(1,1)
for i=lbound(vdata) + 1 to ubound(vdata)
sData=sData & ","
next i
The above code should be blazing fast. I don't think you can use Join on a variant, but you could always attempt it, that would make it even faster. You could also try application.worksheetfunctions.contat (or whatever the contatenate function is) to combine the results and then just grab the final result.
On Error Resume Next
wks.ShowAllData
On Error GoTo 0
wks.UsedRange.Rows.Hidden = False
wks.UsedRange.Columns.Hidden = False
rFilterLocation.ClearContents