Excel has a very useful feature called “cell comments” using which you can add comment to a cell. This is a very good way to gather remarks and review comments when a workbook is shared with colleagues and others. But what if you have typed a ton of cell comments and now want a way to extract them and do something with that data?
Well, no need to select each comment and copy the contents. You can use a simple user defined formula (UDF) to do just that. Here is a one line formula that I wrote.
Function getComment(incell) As String
' aceepts a cell as input and returns its comments (if any) back as a string
On Error Resume Next
getComment = incell.Comment.Text
End FunctionTo make it work,
To make the getComment() UDF work for you, you need to install it first. Here is a step by step guide if you dont know how to install user defined formulas in excel.
The simple and easy version:
- Copy the above vba code
- Open a new excel file
- Right click on any sheet tab name and select “view code” option.
- Don’t be scared of the VBA editor. Take a deep breath.
- Click on “Insert” menu option and select “Module”
- Paste the code in the new module
- Save the workbook and start using the getComment() formula.
The lengthy and more stable version:
- Same as first 6 steps above.
- Press ctrl+s to save the work book. Specify “excel add-in” as the file type.
- Now, go back to excel and install this new add-in
- That is all. Now you can use getComment() formula in your workbooks.
Related: How to change the shape of cell comments from rectangle to any other shape
4 Responses to “Office 2010 Contest Winners are here!!!”
I while ago I wrote a post on selecting a couple of names from a range via an UDF
I could have been handy.... especially because I didn't win.... lol
http://xlns.lamkamp.nl/?p=14
Sweet! I won! Thank you so much, Chandoo! I'm really speechless! I'll look out for an e-mail from you. Again, I really appreciate it, and I can't wait to fire it up!
Sincerely,
Tom "this one" 🙂
Thank You... Thank You... Thank You... 🙂
Hi,
Don't want to ruin your party.. 😉 but I noticed that when you sort the list A2:B11 (step 2), the RAND function re-calculates the numbers so that they are different and in mixed order again. I had to paste the whole area as values first and then sort to get it to work.
Wonder if the same happened to you because in your list at least Greg has a higher value than Tom 🙂