My heartiest Diwali wishes to all our readers.
The spirit of Diwali is to encourage people to spread joy, celebrate good things and discard darkness (evil). These ideas are universal. So let me wish you a very happy Diwali.
Diwali, festival of lights, is celebrated in the month of October / November. It is one of my favorite festivals since childhood. A time when all family members get together, celebrate all the good in their life, laugh and light a few fire crackers (fire works).
This year, our kids (Nishanth & Nakshatra) too are excited about the festival. They are eager to light diyas (small lamps), watch the fire works and enjoy. Naturally I do not feel like opening Excel.
But then…,
Sometime during my morning coffee, I thought “hey, why not create a small Diwali greeting using Excel?”
So here we go.
Happy Diwali Animated Chart
See the chart demo here:
How does it work?
Well, that is for you to figure out. I am too lazy to lift the full veil for you. But here are some clues:
- The greeting is just a bubble chart
- Few bubbles are for the tinkling stars
- Few more for the diyas
- Background VBA just modifies the bubble size thru a simple scaling factor
- For more, see this: Animated Hurricane Sandy Chart
Download and play with this
Click here to download the animated Diwali greeting & play with it. Examine the code & formulas to understand how this is created.
Do you like this Chart?
Do you like this chart? Area you able to figure out how this is made? Please share your ideas & suggestions using comments.
If you are feeling adventurous, create your own animation (using Excel of courses) and share it with us all 🙂
Want to create such animated charts – Read on
Animation is a powerful way to attract user attention. Check out these pages to learn more.
- Journey of Hurricane Sandy – Animated Chart
- 3D Dancing pendulums using Excel Charts & VBA
- Designing a clock using Excel
- Animation with out macros [for fun]
Want more? Consider our VBA course
If you want to learn more about animation & other VBA techniques, consider joining our online VBA classes. In a few weeks, you can master all aspects of Excel VBA & Macros.
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