In the past I have written a number of posts on the use of Custom Number formats including
Selective Chart Axis Formats
Custom Chart Axis Formats (Part 2)
A technique to quickly develop custom number formats
Chandoo has written about Custom Number Formats in:
Custom cell formatting in Excel a few tips tricks
Color Modifier
As part of these techniques you have the option to set the colors using the [Color] modifier
You can use a Custom format of: $#,##0;[Red]-$#,##0
10 Dollars will be displayed as $10
-10 Dollars will be displayed as -$10
Colors available include Red, Blue, Green, Yellow
However there is a much larger color palette available
Anybody who has or is still using Excel 2003 or prior will have a color picker which looks like this:
Well these 56 colors are all available and not just in Excel 95-2003 but in All Excel versions up to and including Excel 2013.
We have two methods to access these colors:
1. Using the Colors Name or
2. Using a Color Number.
Color Name
In Excel 95-2003 you can Right Click on a cell and change the Font or the Fill color
Simply select a color like below:
Note that a Green Color has been selected, the Dialog shows the name of the Color as Sea Green
To save you opening an early version of Excel here are all the colors listed above:
Top Row
Black, Brown, Olive Green, Dark Green, Dark Teal, Dark Blue, Indigo, Grey-80%
2nd Row
Dark Red, Orange, dark yellow, Green, Teal, Blue, Blue-Grey, Grey-50%
3rd Row
Red, Light Orange, Lime, Sea Green, Aqua, Light Blue, Violet, Grey-40%
4th Row
Pink, Gold, Yellow, Bright Green, Turquoise, Sky Blue, Plum, Grey-25%
5th Row
Rose, Tan, Light Yellow, Light Green, Light Turquoise, Pale Blue, Lavender, White
6th Row
Periwinkle, Plum, Ivory, Light Turquoise, Dark Purple, Coral, Ocean Blue, Ice Blue
Bottom Row
Dark Blue, Pink, Yellow, Turquoise, Violet, dark Red, Teal, Blue
To use these use the format $#,##0;[Color Name]-$#,##0
eg: [Blue Grey]$#,##0;[Sea Green]-$#,##0
This will display Ten Dollars as $10 and Negative Ten Dollars as -$10
Color Number
The Alternative method is to use a Custom Number Format and using the Color Number modifier like [Color Number]$#,##0;[Color Number]-$#,##0
[Color4]$#,##0;[Color3]-$#,##0
This will display Ten Dollars as $10 and Negative Ten Dollars as -$10
Once again to save you trialing each color you can see the effects of each color on a white and Black background below:
Warnings:
I haven’t tested it but I am sure the Color Names will be different in different language versions of Excel.
I haven’t tested these techniques on a Mac version of Excel but I am pretty sure these techniques should work.
Forward compatibility should be ok, but can’t be guaranteed.
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