Recently, I was presented with a challenge to produce a report consisting of mixed section of dynamic tables, charts and text with varying font sizes to emphasise figures within the text. I couldn’t implement the varying font size text via the use of this technique just by using the static cell formatting, as the content kept change position within the text depending on the user input.
Just to highlight more clearly the challenge I faced was to produce the text as follows with highlighted numbers in bold changing their position as inputted by user, sample of text as illustrated below:
“
The company was added as a component to the S&P 500 index Thursday, and it gained 1.8% Friday, trading at $194.58.”
This challenge, I overcome by using a great functionality presented by
VBAExpress to format cell text under VBA control, where I was able to locate the required text and format as required.
The section code I utilized in my work is as follows with the comments illustrating the usage:
Option Explicit
Sub xlCellTextMgmt( _
TargetCell As Range, _
TargetWord As String, _
Optional FirstOnly As Boolean = True, _
Optional FontName As String, _
Optional FontBold As Boolean, _
Optional FontSize As Variant, _
Optional FontColor As Variant)
'
'****************************************************************************************
' Title xlCellTextMgmt
' Target Application: MS Excel
' Function: reformats selected text within the target cell
' Limitations: no explicit checks for acceptable values, e.g., does not
' check to ensure that FontName is a currently supported
' font
' Passed Values
' TargetCell [input,range] the target cell containing the text to
' be reformatted
' TargetWord [input,string] the words in the target cell text that are
' to be reformatted. TargetWord can contain
' anything from a single character to several
' words or even the entire text of the target
' cell
' FirstOnly [input,boolean] a TRUE/FALSE flag indicating if the
' reformatting is to be done on ONLY the 1st
' instance of the target word (True) or on ALL
' instances (False) {Default = True}
' FontName [input,string] the name of the new font. Omit if the font
' is to be left unchanged
' FontBold [input,boolean] a TRUE/FALSE flag indicating if the target
' words should be BOLD. True ==> Bold. Omit
' if the text is to be left unchanged.
' FontSize [input,variant] the size of the new font. Omit if the size
' is to be left unchanged.
' FontColor [input,variant] the color of the new font. Can be one of
' the standard colors from the Excel palette or
' can be one of the standard "vbColors".
' Omit if the color is to be left unchanged.
'
'****************************************************************************************
'
'
Dim Start As Long
Start = 0
Do
'
' find the start of TargetWord in TargetCell.Text
' if TargetWord not found, exit
'
Start = InStr(Start + 1, TargetCell.Text, TargetWord)
If Start < 1 Then Exit Sub
'
' test for each font arguement, if present, apply appropriately
'
With TargetCell.Characters(Start, Len(TargetWord)).Font
If IsNull(FontName) = False Then .Name = FontName
If IsNull(FontBold) = False Then .Bold = FontBold
If IsNull(FontSize) = False Then .Size = FontSize
If IsNull(FontColor) = False Then .ColorIndex = FontColor
End With
'
' if request was for ONLY the first instance of TargetWord, exit
' otherwise, loop back and see if there are more instances
'
If FirstOnly = True Then Exit Sub
Loop
End Sub
This code i used within a worksheet activate event where a user input could be plugged in on a diffrent worksheet and could be reflected instanly upon a change on the final report sheet.
Refrences:
http://www.vbaexpress.com/kb/getarticle.php?kb_id=743
