Today is February 29th, and that means, this year we have one more day to be awesome. So lets celebrate it in Excel style!
Lets learn 14 different ways to tell if an year is leap year, using Excel Formulas.
Why 14? because, we are awesome like that.
Why 14 methods to just find the year in cell D4 is leap year or not? Because, we all know that by learning different ways to solve a problem, we become smarter, more awesome and have more fun. So lets roll.
Before we start..,
Since all the 14 methods rely on certain calculations, I have created some names. See below:
All the names are self-explanatory, except the febDays. So lets take a look at it.
febDays formula
For one of the methods, we need to have all the dates in February in a list. If we want the first of Feb as a date, we can use =DATE(year,2,1). But we want all dates in February. That means, we need to use a list (array) in third parameter of DATE like this:
=DATE(year,2,{1,2,3,4,….,28,29})
Instead of typing all the 28/29 numbers, we can use ROW formula to generate these, like:
=ROW($A$1:$A$29) would give me a numbers from 1 thru 29.
But the problem is in many years Feb has only 28 days, and for rest, it has 29 days. So we modify the second part of row formula and use the last DAY of the Feb, like this:
=ROW($A$1: INDEX($A$1:$A$29,DAY(EOMONTH(feb1st,0))))
To get the last day of a month, we use = DAY(EOMONTH(1st date, 0))
I think you can put the rest of pieces together to solve this puzzle.
Moving on,
#1 – The year has 366 days
This is the obvious one. We use =DATE(year+1,1,1)-jan1st=366 to check if there are 366 days between January 1st of next year and this year.
#2 – February 29th is not March 1st
Because in Excel all dates are numbers, when we use a formula like =DATE(2011,2,29), Excel gives us the date of March 1st, even though we wanted 29th Day of February in 2011. So a simple leap year check is to see if February 29 is March 1st or not!
=DATE(year,2,29)<>mar1st
#3 – February has 29 days
This is another obvious test. In a leap year, February has 29 days. So=DAY(EOMONTH(feb1st,0))=29 will be true for leap years.
#4 – February 1st and March 1st are not on same day of week
In non leap years, Feb has 28 days (a multiple of 7), so both Feb and March start on same day of week. So, =WEEKDAY(feb1st)<>WEEKDAY(mar1st) will be TRUE for leap years.
#5 – Adding 365 to January 1st does not change year
Well, that is obvious too. =YEAR(jan1st)=YEAR(jan1st+365) is TRUE for leap years.
#6 – 30th Day of February is March 1st
If an year is leap year, 30th day of February [DATE(year,2,30)] is same as March 1st. So, =DATE(year,2,30)=mar1st is TRUE for leap years.
#7 – 0th Day of March is Feb 29th
In real world there is no zeroth day for any month. But in Excel, since all dates are numbers, 0th day refers to last day of previous month. So, =DAY(DATE(year,3,0))=29 will be TRUE in leap years.
#8 – April 1st and January 1st are on same day of week
In leap years, there are 91 days between January 1st and April 1st. And since 91 is a multiple of 7, both April 1st and January 1st start on same day of week. Hence, =WEEKDAY(jan1st)=WEEKDAY(apr1st) will be true for leap years.
#9 – Only 2 more months start on same day of week as January
In leap years, both April and July start on same day of week as January. (Where as in non-leap years, Only October starts on same day of week as Jan).
To test this, we will of course use the SUMPRODUCT. like this:
=SUMPRODUCT(–(WEEKDAY(DATE(year,ROW($A$2:$A$12),1))=WEEKDAY(jan1st)))=2
The portion WEEKDAY(DATE(year,ROW($A$2:$A$12),1)) gives all the first day of weeks from February to December. And then we just check how many of these are same as January 1st’s week day.
#10 – Next year’s February 1st and this year’s February 2nd are NOT on same day of week
In non-leap years, there are 364 days between February 2nd and next year’s February 1st. Since 364 is a multiple of 7, both of these days are on same day of week. Which is not the case in leap years (as the difference becomes 365). So, =WEEKDAY(feb1st+1)<>WEEKDAY(EDATE(feb1st,12)) will be TRUE for leap years.
#11 – February 1st’s day of week occurs 5 times in that month
This a bit tricky to test, but then again we have SUMPRODUCT. So, =SUMPRODUCT(–(WEEKDAY(febDays)=WEEKDAY(feb1st)))=5 will be TRUE for leap years. The name febDays has all dates in February. I think the rest is easy to understand.
#12 – February starts and ends on same day of week
29 days means both 1st and 29 are on same weekday. So, =WEEKDAY(feb1st)=WEEKDAY(EOMONTH(feb1st,0)) will be true for leap years.
#13 – Spreadsheet day (October 17) and February 1st are on same day of week
Debra, who is a well known Excel blogger & author started the whole spreadsheet day thing. She says, we should celebrate October 17 as spreadsheet day. I love that idea, mainly because, it is just 3 days before my birthday and I like celebrations. And I also like Excel 🙂 So blame her if you do not like this way of testing for leap years.
In leap years, there are 259 days between February 1st and October 17. And since 259 is a multiple of 7 (and 37), we know that they are both on same day of week. So, =WEEKDAY(feb1st)=WEEKDAY(DATE(year,10,17)) is true for leap years.
#14 – Finally, the year is divisible by 4 and if it is divisible by 100, then also by 400
Finally, we are going to test the whole “an year is leap year if it is divisible by 4 and if it is divisible by 100, then it is also divisible by 400” thing. This is a slightly tricky one to test. The formula, =((MOD(year,4)=0)*((MOD(year,100)<>0)+(MOD(year,400)=0))=1) will be TRUE for leap years and false for non-leap years.
Download Leap Year Test Workbook
Click here to download the workbook with all these 14 examples. Play with the formulas, named ranges to understand these techniques.
How do you check it is a leap year?
If you are working and you get paid on first day of a month, then one clear way of knowing leap year is that you get your salary one day later. Other than this, what method would you use to find if an year is leap year. Go ahead and be creative. Share your ideas and formulas using comments. Next leap day is 4 years away. Go
Want to learn how to Dates & Times in Excel – Read these:
If you deal with data that has a lot of date / time stuff, then understanding various Excel features in this area is a must. Read below pages to learn more.
- 10 tips on working with dates & times in Excel
- Calculate difference between 2 dates
- Find thanksgiving day for any year
- Check if 2 ranges of dates overlap
- Rolling months in Excel
- How to convert text to dates
- Even more on Excel dates & times
Want to master Date & Other Excel Formulas?
If you want to learn how various formulas in this post work and know more about everyday Excel formulas, please consider joining my Excel Formula crash course. It has detailed video tutorials on more than 40 everyday Excel formulas and teaches you all the powerful techniques to become a formula ninja.
38 Responses to “Time to showoff your VBA skills – Help me fix ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert snafu”
I tried your code with 2003, it works.
But, I know Addpicture does not take URLs anymore with 2007 onwards, perhaps its the same with picture.insert as well.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928983/en-us
The above link gives the solution as "picture fill in a shape such as a rectangle".
Tried to recreate this, but it worked fine for me. I just took the image of the error you showed in the post. Is there more info that can narrow this down a bit?
Don't know if this helps?
http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=47101
Hi
Not sure if this is what you're after, but I just tried this
Sub Macro1()
ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif").Select
End Sub
Tied a button to it on the sheet and it seems to work; hope this helps a little
Ian
@All.. the issue is in Excel 2007. In 2003 ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert seems to work fine. Unfortunately, I have design this in Excel 2007.. that is why I posted it here..
v2
Sub Macro1()
Set n = ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif")
With Range("c12")
t = .Top
l = .Left
End With
With n
.Top = t
.Left = l
End With
End Sub
Ian
That didn't come out very well. This positions at c12, so can change easily:
Sub Macro1()
Set n = ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/images/logo.gif")
With Range("c12")
t = .Top
l = .Left
End With
With n
.Top = t
.Left = l
End With
End Sub
Works OK in 2007
Ian
The above codes work fines to my EXCEL 2007. Thanks.
Chandoo:
Try 'ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert'
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert("C:\Example.png")
.Left = ActiveSheet.Range("A1").Left
.Top = ActiveSheet.Range("A1").Top
End With
activesheet.pictures.insert "C:\Documents and Settings\Jon Peltier\Desktop\2007 stuff\insert_charts_2007.png"
Works for me in 2003 SP3 and in 2007 SP2.
Check the URL, and make sure you have internet connectivity.
What also works, and is newer (pictures.insert was supposedly deprecated in '97):
activesheet.shapes.addpicture "C:\Documents and Settings\Jon Peltier\Desktop\2007 stuff\insert_charts_2007.png", false, true, 200,200,100,100
Unfortunately you must specify dimensions (the last four arguments) and you don't necessarily know them. But the picture size is still related back to the original picture size, so you could use scaleheight and scalewidth to fix this.
Chandoo: I just re-read your post.
The code I posted works for me. However, I'm using a local picture. If you try to add a picture from the web, this won't work.
I remember solving this problem before by adding a rectangle shape first, then using the Shapes.AddPicture method to get a picture from the web.
I'll find that code and post it here.
Some more updates... The code "ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert (path)" works fine in Excel 2007 at home. Strange it failed miserably on my work laptop. Do you think this has got something to do with SP2 of MS Office 2007 or something like that?
@Ian, Jon: Thanks for the code snippets. I guess I will use my home installation of excel to do this.
Chandoo:
Try this on your work laptop:
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50, 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
End Sub
FYI:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928983/en-us
I didn't mean to post code with a local file, because both approaches worked with an internet image as well. This is in Excel 2007 SP2.
activesheet.pictures.insert "http://peltiertech.com/images/2009-07/col_area_noblanks.png"
Jon: Looks like I have SP1 on my client machine! I wasn't paying attention.
Just checked my home computer where I have SP2, and you're right...looks like they fixed it.
I didn't even bother testing in SP1, though I could if anyone cares enough.
I'm afraid I don't have a solution, but I find it remarkable that after attaining a certain status in the Excel world, Chandoo does not need to post on an Excel discussion forum to get help for an Excel problem. Instead, he posts on his blog and all the gurus come rushing to his help.
Isn't Web 2.0 great?
Teylyn - I saw Chandoo's tweet first, and followed the link back to his blog.
@Mike.. thank you. I have seen the fill rectangle solution before posting the query here. For that matter, I have also tried the solution of embedding a browser control on a spreadsheet. both of these seemed a bit extreme. That is why I have asked it here.
But I guess I will end up using it if I had to build this in work laptop.
@Teylyn: I have thought of posting this in a forum. (Unfortunately I have not been to any excel group in the last 5 years. Last time I was active was when I built a jave based excel sheet construction solution using POI.HSSF classes of Apache... ) After searching for a few hours, I found several forum posts where others had same problem and the solution recommended (using .left and .top parameters) is not working for me. Incidentally most of these solutions are from a certain Jon Peltier 😛
I thought may be the problem is interesting for fellow blog readers. So I posted it here.
Hi,
Adapting the code in the question,
[code]
Sub InsPicture()
pPath = "http://chandoo.org/images/pointy-haired-dilbert-excel-charts-tips.png"
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath)
.Left = Range("a1").Left
.Top = Range("a1").Top
End With
End Sub
[/code]
Seems to work fine
Looks like it was a problem in 2007 up to SP1, which was corrected in SP2.
@Jon.. seems like the case. I just checked the version at work laptop. it is 12.0.6331.5000 (SP1).
Thank you so much every one. I really appreciate your time and suggestions in solving this.
Glad to help. I couldn't understand why something so straightforward wasn't working.
Hi All
Is there a way of inserting a motion clip eg animated gif or swf or flv?
Thks
You can insert animated GIFs by inserting them in a browser control through VBA. For other types of movies, I can guess you can insert them as clip art.
I WANT THE INSERT PICTURE BY USING COADING
so currently i was struggling same as you, chandoo, with the insert picture method in excel 2007/10 from an url and came along your thread here.
so i re-designed the code on the addshape method as mike was suggesting it and all of the sudden it works just fine.
thanks alot to you guys, you were a great help
a big salut from switzerland
Hi guys,
I need help copying and pasting an image with the path in a cell.
I leave the code.
And thank you very much!
Sub Copiarimg()
Dim pic As Picture
With ActiveSheet
Set pic = .Pictures.Insert(Range("f2").Value)
With .Range("e9:g22")
pic.Top = .Top
pic.Left = .Left
pic.Width = .Width
pic.Height = .Height
End With
End Sub
I've played around with the approaches in these comments, and the code below is what I've come up with. The ImagePath can be a local file or a URL. As Jon mentioned above, the trick is to set an arbitrary value for the width and height, then call the ScaleWidth and ScaleHeight methods afterward to reset the picture to its original size. Once the LockAspectRatio property is set, you can change the picture width and the height will automatically scale (or vice-versa).
Sub AddPictureToRange(TopLeftCellAddress As String, ImagePath As String)
Dim pic As Shape
Dim l As Single, t As Single
Dim temp As Single
l = Me.Range(TopLeftCellAddress).Left
t = Me.Range(TopLeftCellAddress).Top
temp = 10# ' arbitrary value
Set pic = Me.Shapes.AddPicture(ImagePath, msoFalse, msoTrue, l, t, temp, temp)
pic.ScaleHeight 1#, msoTrue
pic.ScaleWidth 1#, msoTrue
pic.LockAspectRatio = msoTrue
End Sub
I need some help with inserting pictures. I have an excel file with a column of item numbers next to this row I want to insert a picture of this item. The pictures are coded with the item number so I tried to insert it with one of the codes above:
Sub InsPicture()
pPath = "http://img.bricklink.com/P/80/55236.gif"
With ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath)
End With
End Sub
That worked but I need to do that for every row separtly.
So I tried in the code
pPath = "http://img.bricklink.com/P/80/"&Text(a1;"#")&".gif"
But that gives errors.
Anybody ideas?
Hi Nicholas, I used your solution in a related problem in Excel 2003 and it worked flawlessly..thank you!
Hi Mike Alexander,
Your solution with some changes was helpful in my problem in XL 2007, thanks.
Hi,
thanks all. In addition, I had a problem with multiple pictures inserting (every new picture replaced the prior one). I've changed it a bit, may be helpful..
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50 , 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Copy
ActiveSheet.Paste
End Sub
Try this instead:
Sub test()
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle, 50 , 50, 100, 200
ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture _
"http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/images/dpwithPig6.png"
End Sub
Thanks to everyone, this thread has been very helpful. However, image inserting still doesn't work quite as expect for me.
While I can get a picture inserted into an Excel 2010 worksheet using either:
1) ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture...
2) ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath), and
3) Shapes.AddPicture...
unfortunately the images all insert with a display size determined not by the actual pixel dimensions of the image but by the dpi resolution.
So for example, if I insert two copies of the exact same 600x600 pixel image, one with a 300dpi resolution and the other with 72dpi, they display at vastly different sizes on screen.
While this might be intended behaviour for Excel in order to maintain a WSYWIG printing layout, I actually need a way to insert the image based on the the actual pixel dimesnsions and ignoring the dpi resolution.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Kez
Not doing an intentional bump, but realised I posted in rely to one of the repsonses here instead of to the main thread, so reposting.
=====
Thanks to everyone, this thread has been very helpful. However, image inserting still doesn’t work quite as expected for me.
While I can get a picture inserted into an Excel 2010 worksheet using any of the below methods:
1) ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture....
2) ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(pPath), and
3) Shapes.AddPicture....
unfortunately the images all insert with a display size determined not by the actual pixel dimensions of the image but by the dpi resolution.
So for example, if I insert two copies of the exact same 600×600 pixel image, one with a 300dpi resolution and the other with 72dpi, they display at vastly different sizes in Excel on screen.
While this might be intended behaviour for Excel in order to maintain a WYSIWYG printing layout, I actually need a way to insert the images based on the the actual pixel dimesnsions and ignoring the dpi resolution.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Kez
Well, answered my own question 🙂
For those who might be interested, you can use this function:
Public Function GetPicDims(strFilePath As String, strFileName As String) As String
GetPicDims = CreateObject("Shell.Application").Namespace((strFilePath)). _
ParseName(strFileName).ExtendedProperty("Dimensions")
End Function
to get the dimensions of the image you want to insert. Then you can parse the return string and use the width and height values to add a rectangle shape of the appropraite size, like:
ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddShape msoShapeRectangle 50, 50, iWidth, iHeight
which you then fill with the picture:
ActiveSheet.Shapes(ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count).Fill.UserPicture "c:\temp\test.jpg"
This way the picture gets inserted using the pixel dimensions and the (print) resolution gets ignored.
If desired, the GetPicDims function can be made more generic to get other ExtendedProperties.
Regards
Kez