Поиск значения в строке excel vba

Поиск какого-либо значения в ячейках Excel довольно часто встречающаяся задача при программировании какого-либо макроса. Решить ее можно разными способами. Однако, в разных ситуациях использование того или иного способа может быть не оправданным. В данной статье я рассмотрю 2 наиболее распространенных способа.

Поиск перебором значений

Довольно простой в реализации способ. Например, найти в колонке «A» ячейку, содержащую «123» можно примерно так:

Sheets("Данные").Select
For y = 1 To Cells.SpecialCells(xlLastCell).Row
    If Cells(y, 1) = "123" Then
        Exit For
    End If
Next y
MsgBox "Нашел в строке: " + CStr(y)

Минусами этого так сказать «классического» способа являются: медленная работа и громоздкость. А плюсом является его гибкость, т.к. таким способом можно реализовать сколь угодно сложные варианты поиска с различными вычислениями и т.п.

Поиск функцией Find

Гораздо быстрее обычного перебора и при этом довольно гибкий. В простейшем случае, чтобы найти в колонке A ячейку, содержащую «123» достаточно такого кода:

Sheets("Данные").Select
Set fcell = Columns("A:A").Find("123")
If Not fcell Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox "Нашел в строке: " + CStr(fcell.Row)
End If

Вкратце опишу что делают строчки данного кода:
1-я строка: Выбираем в книге лист «Данные»;
2-я строка: Осуществляем поиск значения «123» в колонке «A», результат поиска будет в fcell;
3-я строка: Если удалось найти значение, то fcell будет содержать Range-объект, в противном случае — будет пустой, т.е. Nothing.

Полностью синтаксис оператора поиска выглядит так:

Find(What, After, LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder, SearchDirection, MatchCase, MatchByte, SearchFormat)

What — Строка с текстом, который ищем или любой другой тип данных Excel

After — Ячейка, после которой начать поиск. Обратите внимание, что это должна быть именно единичная ячейка, а не диапазон. Поиск начинается после этой ячейки, а не с нее. Поиск в этой ячейке произойдет только когда весь диапазон будет просмотрен и поиск начнется с начала диапазона и до этой ячейки включительно.

LookIn — Тип искомых данных. Может принимать одно из значений: xlFormulas (формулы), xlValues (значения), или xlNotes (примечания).

LookAt — Одно из значений: xlWhole (полное совпадение) или xlPart (частичное совпадение).

SearchOrder — Одно из значений: xlByRows (просматривать по строкам) или xlByColumns (просматривать по столбцам)

SearchDirection — Одно из значений: xlNext (поиск вперед) или xlPrevious (поиск назад)

MatchCase — Одно из значений: True (поиск чувствительный к регистру) или False (поиск без учета регистра)

MatchByte — Применяется при использовании мультибайтных кодировок: True (найденный мультибайтный символ должен соответствовать только мультибайтному символу) или False (найденный мультибайтный символ может соответствовать однобайтному символу)

SearchFormat — Используется вместе с FindFormat. Сначала задается значение FindFormat (например, для поиска ячеек с курсивным шрифтом так: Application.FindFormat.Font.Italic = True), а потом при использовании метода Find указываем параметр SearchFormat = True. Если при поиске не нужно учитывать формат ячеек, то нужно указать SearchFormat = False.

Чтобы продолжить поиск, можно использовать FindNext (искать «далее») или FindPrevious (искать «назад»).

Примеры поиска функцией Find

Пример 1: Найти в диапазоне «A1:A50» все ячейки с текстом «asd» и поменять их все на «qwe»

With Worksheets(1).Range("A1:A50")
  Set c = .Find("asd", LookIn:=xlValues)
  Do While Not c Is Nothing
    c.Value = "qwe"
    Set c = .FindNext(c)
  Loop
End With

Обратите внимание: Когда поиск достигнет конца диапазона, функция продолжит искать с начала диапазона. Таким образом, если значение найденной ячейки не менять, то приведенный выше пример зациклится в бесконечном цикле. Поэтому, чтобы этого избежать (зацикливания), можно сделать следующим образом:

Пример 2: Правильный поиск значения с использованием FindNext, не приводящий к зацикливанию.

With Worksheets(1).Range("A1:A50")
  Set c = .Find("asd", lookin:=xlValues)
  If Not c Is Nothing Then
    firstResult = c.Address
    Do
      c.Font.Bold = True
      Set c = .FindNext(c)
      If c Is Nothing Then Exit Do
    Loop While c.Address <> firstResult
  End If
End With

В ниже следующем примере используется другой вариант продолжения поиска — с помощью той же функции Find с параметром After. Когда найдена очередная ячейка, следующий поиск будет осуществляться уже после нее. Однако, как и с FindNext, когда будет достигнут конец диапазона, Find продолжит поиск с его начала, поэтому, чтобы не произошло зацикливания, необходимо проверять совпадение с первым результатом поиска.

Пример 3: Продолжение поиска с использованием Find с параметром After.

With Worksheets(1).Range("A1:A50")
  Set c = .Find("asd", lookin:=xlValues)
  If Not c Is Nothing Then
    firstResult = c.Address
    Do
      c.Font.Bold = True
      Set c = .Find("asd", After:=c, lookin:=xlValues)
      If c Is Nothing Then Exit Do
    Loop While c.Address <> firstResult
  End If
End With

Следующий пример демонстрирует применение SearchFormat для поиска по формату ячейки. Для указания формата необходимо задать свойство FindFormat.

Пример 4: Найти все ячейки с шрифтом «курсив» и поменять их формат на обычный (не «курсив»)

lLastRow = Cells.SpecialCells(xlLastCell).Row
lLastCol = Cells.SpecialCells(xlLastCell).Column
Application.FindFormat.Font.Italic = True
With Worksheets(1).Range(Cells(1, 1), Cells(lLastRow, lLastCol))
  Set c = .Find("", SearchFormat:=True)
  Do While Not c Is Nothing
    c.Font.Italic = False
    Set c = .Find("", After:=c, SearchFormat:=True)
  Loop
End With

Примечание: В данном примере намеренно не используется FindNext для поиска следующей ячейки, т.к. он не учитывает формат (статья об этом: https://support.microsoft.com/ru-ru/kb/282151)

Коротко опишу алгоритм поиска Примера 4. Первые две строки определяют последнюю строку (lLastRow) на листе и последний столбец (lLastCol). 3-я строка задает формат поиска, в данном случае, будем искать ячейки с шрифтом Italic. 4-я строка определяет область ячеек с которой будет работать программа (с ячейки A1 и до последней строки и последнего столбца). 5-я строка осуществляет поиск с использованием SearchFormat. 6-я строка — цикл пока результат поиска не будет пустым. 7-я строка — меняем шрифт на обычный (не курсив), 8-я строка продолжаем поиск после найденной ячейки.

Хочу обратить внимание на то, что в этом примере я не стал использовать «защиту от зацикливания», как в Примерах 2 и 3, т.к. шрифт меняется и после «прохождения» по всем ячейкам, больше не останется ни одной ячейки с курсивом.

Свойство FindFormat можно задавать разными способами, например, так:

With Application.FindFormat.Font 
  .Name = "Arial" 
  .FontStyle = "Regular" 
  .Size = 10 
End With

Поиск последней заполненной ячейки с помощью Find

Следующий пример — применение функции Find для поиска последней ячейки с заполненными данными. Использованные в Примере 4 SpecialCells находит последнюю ячейку даже если она не содержит ничего, но отформатирована или в ней раньше были данные, но были удалены.

Пример 5: Найти последнюю колонку и столбец, заполненные данными

Set c = Worksheets(1).UsedRange.Find("*", SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
If Not c Is Nothing Then
  lLastRow = c.Row: lLastCol = c.Column 
Else
  lLastRow = 1: lLastCol = 1
End If
MsgBox "lLastRow=" & lLastRow & " lLastCol=" & lLastCol

В этом примере используется UsedRange, который так же как и SpecialCells возвращает все используемые ячейки, в т.ч. и те, что были использованы ранее, а сейчас пустые. Функция Find ищет ячейку с любым значением с конца диапазона.

Поиск по шаблону (маске)

При поиске можно так же использовать шаблоны, чтобы найти текст по маске, следующий пример это демонстрирует.

Пример 6: Выделить красным шрифтом ячейки, в которых текст начинается со слова из 4-х букв, первая и последняя буквы «т», при этом после этого слова может следовать любой текст.

With Worksheets(1).Cells
  Set c = .Find("т??т*", LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlWhole)
  If Not c Is Nothing Then
    firstResult = c.Address
    Do
      c.Font.Color = RGB(255, 0, 0)
      Set c = .FindNext(c)
      If c Is Nothing Then Exit Do
    Loop While c.Address <> firstResult
  End If
End With

Для поиска функцией Find по маске (шаблону) можно применять символы:
* — для обозначения любого количества любых символов;
? — для обозначения одного любого символа;
~ — для обозначения символов *, ? и ~. (т.е. чтобы искать в тексте вопросительный знак, нужно написать ~?, чтобы искать именно звездочку (*), нужно написать ~* и наконец, чтобы найти в тексте тильду, необходимо написать ~~)

Поиск в скрытых строках и столбцах

Для поиска в скрытых ячейках нужно учитывать лишь один нюанс: поиск нужно осуществлять в формулах, а не в значениях, т.е. нужно использовать LookIn:=xlFormulas

Поиск даты с помощью Find

Если необходимо найти текущую дату или какую-то другую дату на листе Excel или в диапазоне с помощью Find, необходимо учитывать несколько нюансов:

• Тип данных Date в VBA представляется в виде #[месяц]/[день]/[год]#, соответственно, если необходимо найти фиксированную дату, например, 01 марта 2018 года, необходимо искать #3/1/2018#, а не «01.03.2018»
• В зависимости от формата ячеек, дата может выглядеть по-разному, поэтому, чтобы искать дату независимо от формата, поиск нужно делать не в значениях, а в формулах, т.е. использовать LookIn:=xlFormulas

Приведу несколько примеров поиска даты.

Пример 7: Найти текущую дату на листе независимо от формата отображения даты.

d = Date
Set c = Cells.Find(d, LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlWhole)
If Not c Is Nothing Then
  MsgBox "Нашел"
Else
  MsgBox "Не нашел"
End If

Пример 8: Найти 1 марта 2018 г.

d = #3/1/2018#
Set c = Cells.Find(d, LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlWhole)
If Not c Is Nothing Then
  MsgBox "Нашел"
Else
  MsgBox "Не нашел"
End If

Искать часть даты — сложнее. Например, чтобы найти все ячейки, где месяц «март», недостаточно искать «03» или «3». Не работает с датами так же и поиск по шаблону. Единственный вариант, который я нашел — это выбрать формат в котором месяц прописью для ячеек с датами и искать слово «март» в xlValues.

Тем не менее, можно найти, например, 1 марта независимо от года.

Пример 9: Найти 1 марта любого года.

d = #3/1/1900#
Set c = Cells.Find(Format(d, "m/d/"), LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlPart)
If Not c Is Nothing Then
  MsgBox "Нашел"
Else
  MsgBox "Не нашел"
End If

Метод Find объекта Range для поиска ячейки по ее данным в VBA Excel. Синтаксис и компоненты. Знаки подстановки для поисковой фразы. Простые примеры.

Метод Find объекта Range предназначен для поиска ячейки и сведений о ней в заданном диапазоне по ее значению, формуле и примечанию. Чаще всего этот метод используется для поиска в таблице ячейки по слову, части слова или фразе, входящей в ее значение.

Синтаксис метода Range.Find

Expression.Find(What, After, LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder, SearchDirection, MatchCase, MatchByte, SearchFormat)

Expression – это переменная или выражение, возвращающее объект Range, в котором будет осуществляться поиск.

В скобках перечислены параметры метода, среди них только What является обязательным.

Метод Range.Find возвращает объект Range, представляющий из себя первую ячейку, в которой найдена поисковая фраза (параметр What). Если совпадение не найдено, возвращается значение Nothing.

Если необходимо найти следующие ячейки, содержащие поисковую фразу, используется метод Range.FindNext.

Параметры метода Range.Find

Наименование	Описание
Обязательный параметр
What	Данные для поиска, которые могут быть представлены строкой или другим типом данных Excel. Тип данных параметра — Variant.
Необязательные параметры
After	Ячейка, после которой следует начать поиск.
LookIn	Уточняет область поиска. Список констант xlFindLookIn: xlValues (-4163) – значения; xlComments (-4144) – примечания*; xlNotes (-4144) – примечания*; xlFormulas (-4123) – формулы.
LookAt	Поиск частичного или полного совпадения. Список констант xlLookAt: xlWhole (1) – полное совпадение; xlPart (2) – частичное совпадение.
SearchOrder	Определяет способ поиска. Список констант xlSearchOrder: xlByRows (1) – поиск по строкам; xlByColumns (2) – поиск по столбцам.
SearchDirection	Определяет направление поиска. Список констант xlSearchDirection: xlNext (1) – поиск вперед; xlPrevious (2) – поиск назад.
MatchCase	Определяет учет регистра: False (0) – поиск без учета регистра (по умолчанию); True (1) – поиск с учетом регистра.
MatchByte	Условия поиска при использовании двухбайтовых кодировок: False (0) – двухбайтовый символ может соответствовать однобайтовому символу; True (1) – двухбайтовый символ должен соответствовать только двухбайтовому символу.
SearchFormat	Формат поиска – используется вместе со свойством Application.FindFormat.

* Примечания имеют две константы с одним значением. Проверяется очень просто: MsgBox xlComments и MsgBox xlNotes.

В справке Microsoft тип данных всех параметров, кроме SearchDirection, указан как Variant.

Знаки подстановки для поисковой фразы

Условные знаки в шаблоне поисковой фразы:

• ? – знак вопроса обозначает любой отдельный символ;
• * – звездочка обозначает любое количество любых символов, в том числе ноль символов;
• ~ – тильда ставится перед ?, * и ~, чтобы они обозначали сами себя (например, чтобы тильда в шаблоне обозначала сама себя, записать ее нужно дважды: ~~).

Простые примеры

При использовании метода Range.Find в VBA Excel необходимо учитывать следующие нюансы:

1. Так как этот метод возвращает объект Range (в виде одной ячейки), присвоить его можно только объектной переменной, объявленной как Variant, Object или Range, при помощи оператора Set.
2. Если поисковая фраза в заданном диапазоне найдена не будет, метод Range.Find возвратит значение Nothing. Обращение к свойствам несуществующей ячейки будет генерировать ошибки. Поэтому, перед использованием результатов поиска, необходимо проверить объектную переменную на содержание в ней значения Nothing.

В примерах используются переменные:

• myPhrase – переменная для записи поисковой фразы;
• myCell – переменная, которой присваивается первая найденная ячейка, содержащая поисковую фразу, или значение Nothing, если поисковая фраза не найдена.

Пример 1

Sub primer1() Dim myPhrase As Variant, myCell As Range myPhrase = «стакан» Set myCell = Range(«A1:L30»).Find(myPhrase) If Not myCell Is Nothing Then MsgBox «Значение найденной ячейки: « & myCell MsgBox «Строка найденной ячейки: « & myCell.Row MsgBox «Столбец найденной ячейки: « & myCell.Column MsgBox «Адрес найденной ячейки: « & myCell.Address Else MsgBox «Искомая фраза не найдена» End If End Sub

В этом примере мы присваиваем переменной myPhrase значение для поиска – "стакан". Затем проводим поиск этой фразы в диапазоне "A1:L30" с присвоением результата поиска переменной myCell. Далее проверяем переменную myCell, не содержит ли она значение Nothing, и выводим соответствующие сообщения.

Ознакомьтесь с работой кода VBA в случаях, когда в диапазоне "A1:L30" есть ячейка со строкой, содержащей подстроку "стакан", и когда такой ячейки нет.

Пример 2

Теперь посмотрим, как метод Range.Find отреагирует на поиск числа. В качестве диапазона поиска будем использовать первую строку активного листа Excel.

Sub primer2() Dim myPhrase As Variant, myCell As Range myPhrase = 526.15 Set myCell = Rows(1).Find(myPhrase) If Not myCell Is Nothing Then MsgBox «Значение найденной ячейки: « & myCell Else: MsgBox «Искомая фраза не найдена» End If End Sub

Несмотря на то, что мы присвоили переменной числовое значение, метод Range.Find найдет ячейку со значением и 526,15, и 129526,15, и 526,15254. То есть, как и в предыдущем примере, поиск идет по подстроке.

Чтобы найти ячейку с точным соответствием значения поисковой фразе, используйте константу xlWhole параметра LookAt:

Set myCell = Rows(1).Find(myPhrase, , , xlWhole)

Аналогично используются и другие необязательные параметры. Количество «лишних» запятых перед необязательным параметром должно соответствовать количеству пропущенных компонентов, предусмотренных синтаксисом метода Range.Find, кроме случаев указания необязательного параметра по имени, например: LookIn:=xlValues. Тогда используется одна запятая, независимо от того, сколько компонентов пропущено.

Пример 3

Допустим, у нас есть многострочная база данных в Excel. В первой колонке находятся даты. Нам необходимо создать отчет за какой-то период. Найти номер начальной строки для обработки можно с помощью следующего кода:

Sub primer3() Dim myPhrase As Variant, myCell As Range myPhrase = «01.02.2019» myPhrase = CDate(myPhrase) Set myCell = Range(«A:A»).Find(myPhrase) If Not myCell Is Nothing Then MsgBox «Номер начальной строки: « & myCell.Row Else: MsgBox «Даты « & myPhrase & » в таблице нет» End If End Sub

Несмотря на то, что в ячейке дата отображается в виде текста, ее значение хранится в ячейке в виде числа. Поэтому текстовый формат необходимо перед поиском преобразовать в формат даты.

title	keywords	f1_keywords	ms.prod	api_name	ms.assetid	ms.date	ms.localizationpriority
Range.Find method (Excel)	vbaxl10.chm144128	vbaxl10.chm144128	excel	Excel.Range.Find	d9585265-8164-cb4d-a9e3-262f6e06b6b8	08/14/2019	high

Range.Find method (Excel)

Finds specific information in a range.

[!includeAdd-ins note]

Syntax

expression.Find (What, After, LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder, SearchDirection, MatchCase, MatchByte, SearchFormat)

expression A variable that represents a Range object.

Parameters

Name	Required/Optional	Data type	Description
What	Required	Variant	The data to search for. Can be a string or any Microsoft Excel data type.
After	Optional	Variant	The cell after which you want the search to begin. This corresponds to the position of the active cell when a search is done from the user interface. Notice that After must be a single cell in the range. Remember that the search begins after this cell; the specified cell isn’t searched until the method wraps back around to this cell. If you don’t specify this argument, the search starts after the cell in the upper-left corner of the range.
LookIn	Optional	Variant	Can be one of the following XlFindLookIn constants: xlFormulas, xlValues, xlComments, or xlCommentsThreaded.
LookAt	Optional	Variant	Can be one of the following XlLookAt constants: xlWhole or xlPart.
SearchOrder	Optional	Variant	Can be one of the following XlSearchOrder constants: xlByRows or xlByColumns.
SearchDirection	Optional	Variant	Can be one of the following XlSearchDirection constants: xlNext or xlPrevious.
MatchCase	Optional	Variant	True to make the search case-sensitive. The default value is False.
MatchByte	Optional	Variant	Used only if you have selected or installed double-byte language support. True to have double-byte characters match only double-byte characters. False to have double-byte characters match their single-byte equivalents.
SearchFormat	Optional	Variant	The search format.

Return value

A Range object that represents the first cell where that information is found.

Remarks

This method returns Nothing if no match is found. The Find method does not affect the selection or the active cell.

The settings for LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder, and MatchByte are saved each time you use this method. If you don’t specify values for these arguments the next time you call the method, the saved values are used. Setting these arguments changes the settings in the Find dialog box, and changing the settings in the Find dialog box changes the saved values that are used if you omit the arguments. To avoid problems, set these arguments explicitly each time you use this method.

Use the FindNext and FindPrevious methods to repeat the search.

When the search reaches the end of the specified search range, it wraps around to the beginning of the range. To stop a search when this wraparound occurs, save the address of the first found cell, and then test each successive found-cell address against this saved address.

To find cells that match more complicated patterns, use a For Each…Next statement with the Like operator. For example, the following code searches for all cells in the range A1:C5 that use a font whose name starts with the letters Cour. When Microsoft Excel finds a match, it changes the font to Times New Roman.

For Each c In [A1:C5] If c.Font.Name Like "Cour*" Then c.Font.Name = "Times New Roman" End If Next`

Examples

This example finds all cells in the range A1:A500 in worksheet one that contain the value 2, and changes the entire cell value to 5. That is, the values 1234 and 99299 both contain 2 and both cell values will become 5.

Sub FindValue()
    
    Dim c As Range
    Dim firstAddress As String

    With Worksheets(1).Range("A1:A500") 
        Set c = .Find(2, lookin:=xlValues) 
        If Not c Is Nothing Then 
            firstAddress = c.Address 
            Do 
                c.Value = 5 
                Set c = .FindNext(c) 
            Loop While Not c Is Nothing
        End If 
    End With
    
End Sub

This example finds all cells in the range A1:A500 on worksheet one that contain the substring «abc» and then replaces «abc» with «xyz».

Sub FindString()

    Dim c As Range
    Dim firstAddress As String

    With Worksheets(1).Range("A1:A500")
        Set c = .Find("abc", LookIn:=xlValues)
        If Not c Is Nothing Then
            firstAddress = c.Address
            Do
                c.Value = Replace(c.Value, "abc", "xyz")
                Set c = .FindNext(c)
            Loop While Not c Is Nothing
        End If
    End With

End Sub

[!includeSupport and feedback]

“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of” – Michel de Montaigne

Introduction

This post covers everything you need to know about the VBA Find function. It explains, how to use Find, in simple terms. It also has tons of code examples of Find you can use right now.

If you want to go straight to an example of Find then check out How to do a Simple Find.

If you want to search for text within a string then you are looking for the InStr and InStrRev functions.

If you want to find the last row or column with data then go to Finding the Last Cell Containing Data

Download the Source Code

What is the VBA Find Function?

The Find function is very commonly used in VBA. The three most important things to know about Find are:

1. The Find function is a member of Range.
2. It searches a range of cells containing a given value or format.
3. It is essentially the same as using the Find Dialog on an Excel worksheet.

Introduction

Excel Find Dialog

To view the Excel Find dialog, go to the Home ribbon and click on Find & Select in the Editing section. In the menu that appears select Find(shortcut is Ctrl + F)

 
When  you do this the following dialog will appear:

 
The VBA Find function uses most of the options you can see on this Dialog.

How to Use Options With Find

To use the options you pass them as parameters to the Find function. This is similar to how you use worksheet functions. For example, the Sum function has a Range as a parameter. This means you give it a range when you use it.

The VBA Find uses parameters in the same way. You must give it the item you are searching for. This is the first parameter and it is required.

The rest of the parameters are optional. If you don’t use them then Find will use the existing settings. We’ll see more about this shortly.

The table in the next section shows these parameters. The sections that follow this, give examples and details of how to use these parameters.

VBA Find Parameters

The following tables shows all the Find parameters.

Parameter	Type	Description	Values
What	Required	The value you are searching for	Any VBA data type e.g String, Long
After	Optional	A single cell range that you start your search from	Range(«A5»)
LookIn	Optional	What to search in e.g. Formulas, Values or Comments	xlValues, xlFormulas, xlComments
LookAt	Optional	Look at a part or the whole of the cell	xlWhole, xlPart
SearchOrder	Optional	The order to search	xlByRows or xlByColumns.
SearchDirection	Optional	The direction to search	xlNext, xlPrevious
MatchCase	Optional	If search is case sensitive	True or False
MatchByte	Optional	Used for double byte languages	True or False
SearchFormat	Optional	Allow searching by format. The format is set using Application.FindFormat	True or False

Important Note about Find Parameters

Keep the following in mind as it can cause a lot of frustration when using Find.

As you can see from the table most of the VBA Find parameters are optional. As we said earlier, if you don’t set a Find parameter it uses the existing setting.

For example, if you set the LookIn parameter to xlComments, it will search for a value in comments only. The next time you run Find(either from the Dialog or from VBA) the existing LookIn setting will be Comments.

The following code shows an example of this

' Search in comments only
Range("A1:A5").Find "John", LookIn:=xlComments
' Will search comments as this is the existing setting
Range("A1:A5").Find "John"

' Search in formulas only
Range("A1:A5").Find "John", LookIn:=xlFormulas
' Will search formulas as this is the existing setting
Range("A1:A5").Find "John"

 
This applies to the parameters LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder, and MatchByte.

The Find Return Value

If the search item is found then Find returns  the cell with the value. That is, it returns a Range type of one cell.

If the search item is not found then Find returns an object set to Nothing.

In the following examples, you will see how to deal with the return value.

How to do a Simple Find

Let’s start with a simple example of the VBA Find. You need three things when using the Find function

1. The Range to search
2. The value you are searching for
3. The Range to store the returned cell

 
Let’s take the following sample data

 
We are going to search for the text “Jena” in the cells A1 to A5.

The following code searches for “Jena”. When it finds “Jena”, it then places the cell in the rgFound variable.

' Find the name Jena in the range A1:A5
Dim rgFound As Range
Set rgFound = Range("A1:A5").Find("Jena")

' Print cell address to Immediate Window(Ctrl + G)
Debug.Print rgFound.Address

 
The above code shows the most basic search you can do. If this is your first time using the VBA Find function then I recommend you practice with a simple example like this.

If you want to try these examples you can download the workbook from the top of this post.
 

When the Value is not Found

When you use the VBA Find function, there will be times when you do not find a match. You need to handle this in your code or you will get the following error when you try to use the returned range

 
The following code will give this error if the text “John” is not found in the range A1 to A5

Set rgFound = Range("A1:A5").Find("John")

' Shows Error if John was not found
Debug.Print rgFound.Address

 
What we need to do is check the return value like the following code shows

Set rgFound= Range("A1:A5").Find("John")

If rgFound Is Nothing Then
    Debug.Print "Name was not found."
Else
    Debug.Print "Name found in :" & rgFound.Address
End If

Using After with Find

The After parameter is used if you want to start the search from a particular cell. When, the Excel Find Dialog is used, the active cell is considered the After cell. In other words, this cell is the starting point for the search. In VBA, if no After parameter is specified then the search starts at the top-left cell of the range.

Example 1 Without After

Let’s look at the following code.

Set cell = Range("A1:A6").Find("Rachal")

 
Find will return the cell A2 as this is where the first “Rachal” is found.

Example 2 Using After

In the next example, we use after. We are telling VBA to start the search for “Rachal” after cell A2

Set cell = Range("A1:A6").Find("Rachal", After:=Range("A2"))

 
This will return the cell A6

Example 3 Wrapping Around

If a match is not found then the search will “wrap around”. This means it will go back to the start of the range.

In the following example, we are looking for Drucilla. We start our search After cell A2. Find will search from A3 to A6 and then will move to A1.

So the following code will return A1 as there is no text “Drucilla” from A3 to A6:

Set cell = Range("A1:A6").Find("Drucilla", After:=Range("A2"))

 

 
The search order for this example was A4, A5, A6, A1.

 
You can try these example for yourself by downloading the workbook from the top of the post.
 

Using LookIn with Find

Using LookIn allows you to search in Values, Formulas or Comments.

Important Note: When a cell has text only, this text is considered a formula AND a value. See the table below for details

Cell Contains	Result	LookIn value is
Apple	Apple	Value and Formula
=»App» & «le»‘	Apple	Value only
=LEFT(«Apple»,4)’	Appl	Formula only

 
We are going to use the following sample data.

A2 Contains “Apple” as a value only
A3 Contains  “Apple” as a formula only
A4 Contains “Apple” in  the comment only

 

 
The code below searches for “Apple” in the different types: value, formula, threaded comment and note.

To see a working example of this code you can download the source code from the top of this post.

' Searches in value, formula, threaded comment and note.
' https://excelmacromastery.com/excel-vba-find/
Sub UseLookIn()

    ' Finds A2
    Dim rgFound As Range
    Set rgFound = shLookin.Range("A1:A5").Find("Apple", LookIn:=xlValues)
    Debug.Print "Found 'Apple' as value in: " & rgFound.Address

    ' Finds A3
    Set rgFound = shLookin.Range("A1:A5").Find("Apple", LookIn:=xlFormulas)
    Debug.Print "Found 'Apple' as formula in: " & rgFound.Address

    ' Finds A4
    Set rgFound = shLookin.Range("A1:A5").Find("Apple", LookIn:=xlCommentsThreaded)
    Debug.Print "Found 'Apple' as comment threaded in: " & rgFound.Address
    
    ' Finds A5
    Set rgFound = shLookin.Range("A1:A5").Find("Apple", LookIn:=xlNotes)
    Debug.Print "Found 'Apple' as note in: " & rgFound.Address

End Sub

Using LookAt with Find

Using the LookAt function is pretty straightforward.

1. xlWhole means the search value must match the entire cell contents.
2. xlPart means the search value only has to match part of the cell.

 
The following example has “Apple” as part of the cell contents in A2 and it is the full contents in cell A3.

 
The first Find in the following code finds “Apple” in A2. The second Find is looking for a full match so finds A3.

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseLookAt()

    Dim cell As Range

    ' Finds A2
    Set cell = Range("A1:A3").Find("Apple", Lookat:=xlPart)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

    ' Finds A3
    Set cell = Range("A1:A3").Find("Apple", Lookat:=xlWhole)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

End Sub

 
You can try these example for yourself by downloading the workbook from the top of the post.
 

Using SearchOrder with Find

The SearchOrder parameter allows us to search by row or by column. In the following sample data we have two occurrences of the text “Elli”.

 

 
If we search by row we will find the “Elli” in B2 first. This is because we search in the order row 1, then row 2 etc.

If we search by column we will find the “Elli” in A5 first. This is because we search in the order column A, the Column B etc.

 
The following code shows an example of using the SearchOrder with this sample data

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseSearchOrder()

    Dim cell As Range

    ' Finds B2
    Set cell = Range("A1:B6").Find("Elli", SearchOrder:=xlRows)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

    ' Finds A5
    Set cell = Range("A1:B6").Find("Elli", SearchOrder:=xlColumns)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

End Sub

 

Using SearchDirection with Find

SearchDirection allows you to search forward or backward. So imagine you have the range A1:A7. Searching using xlNext will go in the order

A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7

Searching using xlPrevious will go in the order

A7, A6, A5, A4, A3, A2, A1

 
Using xlNext with the sample data will return A2 as this where it finds the first match. Using xlPrevious will return A6.

' NOTE: Underscore allows breaking up a line
' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseSearchDirection()

    Dim cell As Range

    ' Finds A2
    Set cell = shData.Range("A1:A7") _
        .Find("Elli", SearchDirection:=xlNext)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

    ' Finds A6
    Set cell = shData.Range("A1:A7") _
        .Find("Elli", SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

End Sub

Using xlPrevious with After

It you use the After parameter with xlPrevious then it will start before from the After cell. So if we set the After cell to be A6 then the search order will be

A5,A4,A3,A2,A1,A7,A6.

The following code shows an example of this

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseSearchDirectionAfter()

    Dim cell As Range

    ' Finds A2
    Set cell = shData.Range("A1:A7").Find("Elli" _
            , After:=Range("A6"), SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

    ' Finds A6
    Set cell = shData.Range("A1:A7").Find("Elli" _
            , After:=Range("A7"), SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

End Sub

Using MatchCase with Find

The MatchCase parameter is used to determine if the case of the letters matters in the search. It can be set to True or False.

• True – the case of the letters must match
• False – the case of the letters does not matter

 
The following sample list has two entries for “Elli”. The second has a small letter e

 
The following code examples show the result of setting MatchCase to True and False

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseMatchCase()

    Dim cell As Range

    ' Finds A2
    Set cell = Range("A1:B6").Find("elli", MatchCase:=False)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

    ' Finds A6
    Set cell = Range("A1:B6").Find("elli", MatchCase:=True)
    Debug.Print cell.Address

End Sub

Using MatchByte with Find

The MatchByte parameter is used for languages with a double-byte character set. These are languages such as Chinese/Japanese/Korean.

If you are not using them then this parameter is not relevant. They are used as follows

• True means to match only double-byte characters with double-byte characters.
• False means to double-byte characters can match with single or double-byte characters.

Using the WildCard

We can use the asterisk symbol(*) as a wild card when searching for text. The asterisk represents one or more characters.
For example
“T*” will find any word that starts with T.
“To*” will find any word that starts with To.
“*y” will find any word that ends with y.
“*ey” will find any word that ends with ey.

The code below shows examples of using the wildcard based on this data:

' Examples of using the wild card
' https://excelmacromastery.com/excel-vba-find/
Sub WildCard()

    Dim rgFound As Range
    
    ' Finds Tom in A2
    Set rgFound = shWildCard.Range("A1:A6").Find("T*")
    Debug.Print rgFound.Value & " was found in cell " & rgFound.Address

    ' Finds Tim in A5
    Set rgFound = shWildCard.Range("A1:A6").Find("Ti*")
    Debug.Print rgFound.Value & " was found in cell " & rgFound.Address
    
    ' Finds Tommy in A4
    Set rgFound = shWildCard.Range("A1:A6").Find("*my")
    Debug.Print rgFound.Value & " was found in cell " & rgFound.Address
    
    ' Finds Ellen in A3
    Set rgFound = shWildCard.Range("A1:A6").Find("*len*")
    Debug.Print rgFound.Value & " was found in cell " & rgFound.Address
    
    ' Finds Helen in A6
    Set rgFound = shWildCard.Range("A1:A6").Find("*elen*")
    Debug.Print rgFound.Value & " was found in cell " & rgFound.Address
    
End Sub

Using SearchFormat with Find

Search Format is a bit different than the other parameters. It allows you to search for a cell format such as font type or cell color.

You need to set the format first by using the Application.FindFormat property. Then you set SearchFormat to True to search for this format.

In the following sample data, we have two cells formatted. Cell A5 is set to Bold and Cell A6 has the fill colour set to red.

 
The following code searches for the bold cell:

' Find the cell which has a bold format
' https://excelmacromastery.com/excel-vba-find/
Sub UseSearchFormat()

    Dim findText As String
    findText = "Elli"

    ' Clear previous formats and set new format
    Application.FindFormat.Clear
    Application.FindFormat.Font.Bold = True

    ' Finds A2
    Dim rgFound As Range
    Set rgFound = Range("A1:A6").Find(findText, SearchFormat:=False)
    Debug.Print "Found '" & findText & "' in cell: " & rgFound.Address

    ' Finds A5
    Set rgFound = Range("A1:A6").Find(findText, SearchFormat:=True)
    Debug.Print "Found '" & findText & "' in cell: " & rgFound.Address
    
    Application.FindFormat.Clear

End Sub

Using Wild Card with Format

You can search for a cell based on the format only. In other words, the value in the cell is ignored in the search. You do this by placing “*” in the search string.

The following code searches for a cell that is formatted – the cell color in this example is set to red. The contents of the cell do not matter:

' Find the cell which is formatted - contents do not matter
' https://excelmacromastery.com/excel-vba-find/
Sub UseSearchFormatWild()
    
    ' Clear previous formats and set new format
    Application.FindFormat.Clear
    Application.FindFormat.Interior.Color = rgbRed

    ' Finds A2 as it ignores the format and finds the first cell with any contents
    Dim rgFound As Range
    Set rgFound = shSearchFormat.Range("A1:B6").Find("*", SearchFormat:=False)
    Debug.Print "Found format in cell: " & rgFound.Address

    ' Finds A5 as this is first cell with the format set to interior color as red
    Set rgFound = shSearchFormat.Range("A1:B6").Find("*", SearchFormat:=True)
    Debug.Print "Found format in cell: " & rgFound.Address
    
    Application.FindFormat.Clear

End Sub

Important – Clearing Format

When you set the FindFormat attributes they remain in place until you set them again. This is something to watch out for.

For example, imagine you set the format to bold and then use Find. Then you set the format to font size 12 and use Find again. The search will look for cells where the font is bold AND of size 12.

Therefore, it is a good idea to clear the format before you use it as I have done in the above examples.

Application.FindFormat.Clear

 
You can see we used this in the second SearchFormat example above.

Multiple Searches

In many cases you will want to search for multiple occurrences of the same value.  To do this we use the Find function first. Then we use the .FindNext function to find the next item.

 
.FindNext searches based on the setting we used in the Find. The following code shows a simple example of finding the first and second occurrences of the text “Elli”.

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub SearchNext()

    Dim cell As Range
    ' Find first - A2
    Set cell = Range("A1:A9").Find("Elli")
    Debug.Print "Found: " & cell.Address

    ' Find second - A5
    Set cell = Range("A1:A9").FindNext(cell)
    Debug.Print "Found: " & cell.Address

End Sub

 
Sometimes you won’t know how many occurrences there is. In this case we use a loop to keep searching until we have found all the items.

We use Find to get the first item. If we find an item we then use a Do Loop with .FindNext to find the rest of the occurrences.

FindNext will wrap around. That is, after it finds A9 it will continue the search at A1. Therefore, we store the address of the first cell we find. When FindNext returns this cell again we know we have found all the items.

The following code will find all the occurrences of Elli

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub MultipleSearch()

    ' Get name to search
    Dim name As String: name = "Elli"

    ' Get search range
    Dim rgSearch As Range
    Set rgSearch = Range("A1:A9")

    Dim cell As Range
    Set cell = rgSearch.Find(name)

    ' If not found then exit
    If cell Is Nothing Then
        Debug.Print "Not found"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    ' Store first cell address
    Dim firstCellAddress As String
    firstCellAddress = cell.Address

    ' Find all cells containing Elli
    Do
        Debug.Print "Found: " & cell.Address
        Set cell = rgSearch.FindNext(cell)
    Loop While firstCellAddress <> cell.Address

End Sub

 
The output from this code is
Found: $A$2
Found: $A$5
Found: $A$8

Finding the Last Cell Containing Data

A very common task in VBA is finding the last cell that contains data in a row or colum. This does not use the VBA Find function. Instead, we use the following code to find the last row with data

' Find the last row with data in column A
LastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row

' Find the last row with data in column C
LastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, 3).End(xlUp).Row

 
To find the last column with data we use similar code

' Find the last column with data in row 1
lLastCol = Cells(1, Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column

' Find the last column with data in row 3
lLastCol = Cells(3, Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column

Finding Cells with Patterns

If you want to find cells with certain patterns then you have to use the Like operator rather than Find.

For example, to find  the all the names starting with E you could use the following code

' Print all names starting with the letter E
' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub PatternMatch()

    Dim cell As Range
    ' Go through each cell in range
    For Each cell In Range("A1:A20")
        ' Check the pattern
        If cell Like "[E]*" Then
            Debug.Print cell
        End If
    Next

End Sub

To see a real-world example of using pattern matching check out Example 3: Check if a filename is valid.

An Alternative to using VBA Find

If you are expecting a large number of hits then using an array is a better option. You can read a range of cells to an array very quickly and efficiently.

The following code reads the cell values to an array and then reads through the array to count the items.

' https://excelmacromastery.com/
Sub UseArrayToCount()

    Dim arr As Variant
    ' read cell range to array
    arr = Sheet2.Range("A1:B25").Value

    Dim name As Variant, cnt As Long
    ' Go through the array
    For Each name In arr
        ' Count in the name 'Ray' is found
        If name = "Ray" Then
            cnt = cnt + 1
        End If
    Next name

    Debug.Print "The number of occurrences was: " & cnt

End Sub

Find and Replace

To  do a find and Replace you can use the Replace function. It is very similar to using the Find function.

The replace function is outside the scope of this post although a lot of what you read here can be used with it. You can see the details of it at Microsoft – VBA Replace Function

 

What’s Next?

Free VBA Tutorial If you are new to VBA or you want to sharpen your existing VBA skills then why not try out the The Ultimate VBA Tutorial.

Related Training: Get full access to the Excel VBA training webinars and all the tutorials.

(NOTE: Planning to build or manage a VBA Application? Learn how to build 10 Excel VBA applications from scratch.)

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use the Find and Replace methods in Excel VBA.

VBA Find

Excel has excellent built-in Find and Find & Replace tools.

They can be activated with the shortcuts CTRL + F (Find) or CTRL + H (Replace) or through the Ribbon: Home > Editing > Find & Select.

By clicking Options, you can see advanced search options:

You can easily access these methods using VBA.

Find VBA Example

To demonstrate the Find functionality, we created the following data set in Sheet1.

If you’d like to follow along, enter the data into your own workbook.

VBA Find without Optional Parameters

When using the VBA Find method, there are many optional parameters that you can set.

We strongly recommend defining all parameters whenever using the Find Method!

If you don’t define the optional parameters, VBA will use the currently selected parameters in Excel’s Find window. This means, you may not know what search parameters are being used when the code is ran. Find could be ran on the entire workbook or a sheet. It could search for formulas or values. There’s no way to know, unless you manually check what’s currently selected in Excel’s Find Window.

For simplicity, we will start with an example with no optional parameters defined.

Simple Find Example

Let’s look at a simple Find example:

Sub TestFind()
Dim MyRange As Range

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("employee")
MsgBox MyRange.Address
MsgBox MyRange.Column
MsgBox MyRange.Row

End Sub

This code searches for “employee” in the Used Range of Sheet1. If it finds “employee”, it will assign the first found range to range variable MyRange.

Next, Message Boxes will display with the address, column, and row of the found text.

In this example, the default Find settings are used (assuming they have not been changed in Excel’s Find Window):

• The search text is partially matched to the cell value (an exact cell match is not required)
• The search is not case sensitive.
• Find only searches a single worksheet

These settings can be changed with various optional parameters (discussed below).

Find Method Notes

• Find does not select the cell where the text is found.  It only identifies the found range, which you can manipulate in your code.
• The Find method will only locate the first instance found.
• You can use wildcards (*) e.g. search for ‘E*’

Nothing Found

If the search text does not exist, then the range object will remain empty. This causes a major problem when your code tries to display the location values because they do not exist.  This will result in an error message which you do not want.

Fortunately, you can test for an empty range object within VBA using the Is Operator:

If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then

Adding the code to our previous example:

Sub TestFind()
Dim MyRange As Range

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("employee")
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
    MsgBox MyRange.Column
    MsgBox MyRange.Row
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
End If
End Sub 

VBA Coding Made Easy

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Find Parameters

So far, we have only looked at a basic example of using the Find method.  However, there are a number of optional parameters available to help you refine your search

Parameter	Type	Description	Values
What	Required	The value to search for	Any data type such as a string or numeric
After	Optional	Single cell reference to begin your search	Cell address
LookIn	Optional	Use Formulas, Values, Comments for search	xlValues, xlFormulas, xlComments
LookAt	Optional	Match part or whole of a cell	xlWhole, xlPart
SearchOrder	Optional	The Order to search in – rows or columns	xlByRows, xlByColummns
SearchDirection	Optional	Direction for search to go in – forward or backward	xlNext, xlPrevious
MatchCase	Optional	Search is case sensitive or not	True or False
MatchByte	Optional	Used only if you have installed double byte language support e.g. Chinese language	True or False
SearchFormat	Optional	Allow searching by format of cell	True or False

After Parameter and Find Multiple Values

You use the After parameter to specify the starting cell for your search. This is useful where there is more than one instance of the value that you are searching for.

If a search has already found one value and you know that there will be more values found, then you use the Find method with the ‘After’ parameter to record the first instance and then use that cell as the starting point for the next search.

You can use this to find multiple instances of your search text:

Sub TestMultipleFinds()
Dim MyRange As Range, OldRange As Range, FindStr As String

'Look for first instance of "‘Light & Heat"
Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("Light & Heat")

'If not found then exit
If MyRange Is Nothing Then Exit Sub

'Display first address found
MsgBox MyRange.Address

'Make a copy of the range object
Set OldRange = MyRange

'Add the address to the string delimiting with a "|" character
FindStr = FindStr & "|" & MyRange.Address

'Iterate through the range looking for other instances
Do
    'Search for ‘Light & Heat’ using the previous found address as the After parameter   
    Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("Light & Heat", After:=Range(OldRange.Address))

    'If the address has already been found then exit the do loop – this stops continuous looping
    If InStr(FindStr, MyRange.Address) Then Exit Do
    
    'Display latest found address
    MsgBox MyRange.Address

    'Add the latest address to the string of addresses
    FindStr = FindStr & "|" & MyRange.Address

    'make a copy of the current range
     Set OldRange = MyRange
Loop
End Sub

This code will iterate through the used range, and will display the address every time it finds an instance of ‘Light & Heat’

Note that the code will keep looping until a duplicate address is found in FindStr, in which case it will exit the Do loop.

LookIn Parameter

You can use the LookIn parameter to specify which component of the cell you want to search in.  You can specify values, formulas, or comments in a cell.

• xlValues – Searches cell values (the final value of a cell after it’s calculation)
• xlFormulas – Searches within the cell formula itself (whatever is entered into the cell)
• xlComments – Searches within cell notes
• xlCommentsThreaded – Searches within cell comments

Assuming that a formula has been entered on the worksheet, you could use this example code to find the first location of any formula:

Sub TestLookIn()
Dim MyRange As Range

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("=", LookIn:=xlFormulas)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address   
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
 End If
End Sub

If the ‘LookIn’ parameter was set to xlValues, the code would display a ‘Not Found’ message. In this example it will return B10.

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Using the LookAt Parameter

The LookAt parameter determines whether find will search for an exact cell match, or search for any cell containing the search value.

• xlWhole – Requires the entire cell to match the search value
• xlPart – Searches within a cell for the search string

This code example will locate the first cell containing the text “light”. With Lookat:=xlPart, it will return a match for “Light & Heat”.

Sub TestLookAt()
Dim MyRange As Range
Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("light", Lookat:=xlPart)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
  Else
    MsgBox "Not found"  
End If
End Sub

If xlWhole was set, a match would only return if the cell value was “light”.

SearchOrder Parameter

The SearchOrder parameter dictates how the search will be carried out throughout the range.

• xlRows – Search is done row by row
• xlColumns – Search is done column by column

Sub TestSearchOrder()
Dim MyRange As Range
Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("employee", SearchOrder:=xlColumns)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
End If
End Sub

This influences which match will be found first.

Using the test data entered into the worksheet earlier, when the search order is columns, the located cell is A5.  When the search order parameter is changed to xlRows, the located cell is C4

This is important if you have duplicate values within the search range and you want to find the first instance under a particular column name.

SearchDirection Parameter

The SearchDirection parameter dictates which direction the search will go in – effectively forward or backwards.

• xlNext – Search for next matching value in range
• xlPrevious – Search for previous matching value in range

Again, if there are duplicate values within the search range, it can have an effect on which one is found first.

Sub TestSearchDirection()
Dim MyRange As Range

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("heat", SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
End If
End Sub

Using this code on the test data, a search direction of xlPrevious will return a location of C9.  Using the xlNext parameter will return a location of A4.

The Next parameter means that the search will begin in the top left-hand corner of the search range and work downwards. The Previous parameter means that the search will start in the bottom right-hand corner of the search range and work upwards.

MatchByte Parameter

The MatchBye parameter is only used for languages which use a double byte to represent each character, such as Chinese, Russian, and Japanese.

If this parameter is set to ‘True’ then Find will only match double-byte characters with double-byte characters.  If the parameter is set to ‘False’, then a double-byte character will match with single or double-byte characters.

SearchFormat Parameter

The SearchFormat parameter enables you to search for matching cell formats. This could be a particular font being used, or a bold font, or a text color.  Before you use this parameter, you must set the format required for the search using the Application.FindFormat property.

Here is an example of how to use it:

Sub TestSearchFormat()
Dim MyRange As Range

Application.FindFormat.Clear
Application.FindFormat.Font.Bold = True
Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("heat", Searchformat:=True)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
End If
Application.FindFormat.Clear
End Sub

In this example, the FindFormat property is set to look for a bold font. The Find statement then searches for the word ‘heat’ setting the SearchFormat parameter to True so that it will only return an instance of that text if the font is bold.

In the sample worksheet data shown earlier, this will return A9, which is the only cell containing the word ‘heat’ in a bold font.

Make sure that the FindFormat property is cleared at the end of the code.  If you do not your next search will still take this into account and return incorrect results.

Where you use a SearchFormat parameter, you can also use a wildcard (*) as the search value.  In this case it will search for any value with a bold font:

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("*", Searchformat:=True)

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Using Multiple Parameters

All the search parameters discussed here can be used in combination with each other if required.

For example, you could combine the ‘LookIn’ parameter with the ‘MatchCase’ parameter so that you look at the whole of the cell text, but it is case-sensitive

Sub TestMultipleParameters()
Dim MyRange As Range
Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("Light & Heat", LookAt:=xlWhole, MatchCase:=True)
If Not MyRange Is Nothing Then
    MsgBox MyRange.Address
Else
    MsgBox "Not found"
End If
End Sub

In this example, the code will return A4, but if we only used a part of the text e.g. ‘heat’, nothing would be found because we are matching on the whole of the cell value.  Also, it would fail due to the case not matching.

Set MyRange = Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Find("heat", LookAt:=xlWhole, MatchCase:=True)

Replace in Excel VBA

There is, as you may expect, a Replace function in Excel VBA, which works in a very similar way to ‘Find’ but replaces the values at the cell location found with a new value.

These are the parameters that you can use in a Replace method statement.  These operate in exactly the same way as for the Find method statement.  The only difference to ‘Find’ is that you need to specify a Replacement parameter.

Name	Type	Description	Values
What	Required	The value to search for	Any data type such as a string or numeric
Replacement	Required	The replacement string.	Any data type such as a string or numeric
LookAt	Optional	Match part or the whole of a cell	xlPart or xlWhole
SearchOrder	Optional	The order to search in – Rows or Columns	xlByRows or xlByColumns
MatchCase	Optional	Search is case sensitive or not	True or False
MatchByte	Optional	Used only if you have installed double byte language support	True or False
SearchFormat	Optional	Allow searching by format of cell	True or False
ReplaceFormat	Optional	The replace format for the method.	True or False

The Replace Format parameter searches for a cell with a particular format e.g. bold in the same way the SearchFormat parameter operates in the Find method. You need to set the Application.FindFormat property first, as shown in the Find example code shown earlier 

Replace Without Optional Parameters

At its simplest, you only need to specify what you are searching for and what you want to replace it with.

Sub TestReplace()
Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Replace What:="Light & Heat", Replacement:="L & H"
End Sub

Note that the Find method will only return the first instance of the matched value, whereas the Replace method works through the entire range specified and replaces everything that it finds a match on.

The replacement code shown here will replace every instance of ‘Light & Heat’ with ‘L & H’ through the entire range of cells defined by the UsedRange object

Using VBA to Find or Replace Text Within a VBA Text String

The above examples work great when using VBA to interact with Excel data. However, to interact with VBA strings, you can use built-in VBA Functions like INSTR and REPLACE.

You can use the INSTR Function to locate a string of text within a longer string.

Sub TestInstr()
MsgBox InStr("This is MyText string", "MyText")
End Sub

This example code will return the value of 9, which is the number position where ‘MyText’ is found in the string to be searched.

Note that it is case sensitive. If ‘MyText’ is all lower case, then a value of 0 will be returned which means that the search string was not found. Below we will discuss how to disable case-sensitivity.

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INSTR – Start

There are two further optional parameters available.  You can specify the start point for the search:

MsgBox InStr(9, "This is MyText string", "MyText")

The start point is specified as 9 so it will still return 9.  If the start point was 10, then it would return 0 (no match) as the start point would be too far forward.

INSTR – Case Sensitivity

You can also set a Compare parameter to vbBinaryCompare or vbTextCompare. If you set this parameter, the statement must have a start parameter value.

• vbBinaryCompare – Case-sensitive (Default)
• vbTextCompare – Not Case-sensitive

MsgBox InStr(1, "This is MyText string", "mytext", vbTextCompare)

This statement will still return 9, even though the search text is in lower case.

To disable case-sensitivity you can also declare Option Compare Text at the top of your code module.

VBA Replace Function

If you wish to replace characters in a string with different text within your code, then the Replace method is ideal for this:

Sub TestReplace()
MsgBox Replace("This is MyText string", "MyText", "My Text")
End Sub

This code replaces ‘MyText’ with ‘My Text’.  Note that the search string is case sensitive as a binary compare is the default.

You can also add other optional parameters:

• Start – defines position in the initial string that the replacement has to start from. Unlike in the Find method, it returns a truncated string starting from the character number defined by the Start parameter.
• Count – defines the number of replacements to be made.  By default, Replace will change every instance of the search text found, but you can limit this to a single replacement by setting the Count parameter to 1
• Compare – as in the Find method you can specify a binary search or a text search using vbBinaryCompare or vbTextCompare.  Binary is case sensitive and text is non case sensitive

MsgBox Replace("This is MyText string (mytext)", "MyText", "My Text", 9, 1, vbTextCompare)

This code returns ‘My Text string (mytext)’. This is because the start point given is 9, so the new returned string starts at character 9.   Only the first ‘MyText’ has been changed because the Count parameter is set to 1.

The Replace method is ideal for solving problems like peoples’ names containing apostrophes e.g. O’Flynn. If you are using single quotes to define a string value and there is an apostrophe, this will cause an error because the code will interpret the apostrophe as the end of the string and will not recognize the remainder of the string.

You can use the Replace method to replace the apostrophe with nothing, removing it completely.