It is the customer on the phone again, she wants to know what products we have.
How cool would it be if we can send her a spreadsheet with all the products neatly listed in a table and she can use filters to find what she likes. Alas, we end up sending a biggish PDF brochure that is both difficult to make and maintain.
Well, not any more.
Today we will learn a very useful and fun trick in Excel. We will create a product catalog using Excel that you can send to your clients or boss (and impress them).
We will create something like this:
Step one: Set up the product catalog in Excel Spreadsheet
This is a simple step. Define a table structure for your product catalog. For our example – Supurr Market, I have chosen only one column, with the images of various Cats the shop sells. But you can add more columns like size, age, price, features etc.
- Now, adjust row heights / column widths in such a way that you can fit in the images in cells.
- And align images of your products neatly in the cells.
- Also, just type the product name in the cells where you have kept the images.
Step two: Adjust image properties so that they can be filtered
We will finish this step before you can snap your fingers. Just select all the images, right click and select Format picture (in Excel 2007, you need to select ‘size & properties’) and go to “properties” tab. Here change the option to “Move and size with cells” from whatever it is earlier.
Step three: Apply data filters so that your product catalog can be filtered
Do that.
Step four: Time to impress your clients
Send the lean and sleek product catalog to your clients. Tell your story elegantly and get some orders.
Download the product catalog template workbook
Click here to download the excel product catalog workbook. Use it to learn and make your own product catalogs using MS excel.
Do you run a small business? Tell me how you use excel.
I think Excel has great potential to manage 90% of small business IT operations. It is simple to learn and easy to maintain. I want to know how you use excel to manage your small business. Share your experiences and ideas using comments.
Learn how you can do the same for charts: Dynamic Charts in Excel
PS: Special thanks to Gerald Higgins for telling me about the image properties tip.
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