This is the first installment of the spreadcheats series.
I have used excel an year and half before I learned about the relative and absolute references. It was such a joyous feeling to find out that you can actually write one (or just a few) formulas and use the power of auto-fill to do the dirty work for you.
What is a reference?
A reference in excel lingo “identifies a cell or a range of cells on a worksheet and tells Microsoft Excel where to look for the values or data you want to use in a formula.”
So what is the difference between relative and absolute references?
When you say a reference is relative, you are telling excel to adjust that reference in formulas based on where you move or copy the formula. For eg. if you have a formula in cell B1 as =a1*2 and now if you copy paste this in another cell, lets say, C1, the new formula would read like =b1*2
When you say a reference is absolute, you are telling excel not to adjust that reference in formulas when you move or copy them.
Switching between relative and absolute references:
while editing the formula you can use F4 function key to change the reference of a cell on which cursor is focused. By pressing F4, excel switches the references between relative (A2), absolute ($A$2), relative column & absolute row (A$2) and absolute column & relative row ($A2).
Understanding relative & absolute references plays a key role in writing effective spreadsheet formulas.
6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”
Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...
If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
' Do something
End If
That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely
Thanks!
In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use
If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
'do something
End If
as well.
Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.
Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).
Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).
My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.
By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂
This is nice article.
I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
Hope the examples below help.
Public Sub CaseSensitive2()
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub CaseSensitive()
If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub