Here is a familiar problem:
You create a workbook to track some data. You ask your staff to fill up the data. Almost all the input data is fine, except the date column. Every one types dates in their own format.
Here is a fun, simple & powerful way to warn your users when they enter wrong dates.
Use conditional formatting
Here is a quick demo:
How to ensure cleaner dates with conditional formatting?
- Let’s say your users need to enter date input in cell C3.
- Select C3 and go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule
- Select the rule type as “Use a formula…”
- Use a formula like this: =ISERROR(DAY($C$3))
- Set up formatting to highlight incorrect dates
- Done
Explanation for the formula:
We will assume that C3 contains a valid date and try to do some sort of date operation on it, like finding the day of month using DAY($C$3). If this returns an error, that means we have an invalid date.
So to check the error status, we use ISERROR().
A caveat: dates are numbers
Since Excel dates are numbers, technically, your users can type a number in C3 (like 7) and our conditional formatting won’t trigger the error.
Bonus tip: Adding conditional formatting to an entire column
To add conditional formatting to an entire column,
- Let’s say the date inputs go to column C, starting with C3 as first input
- Select all the cells in column C that will have dates
- Set up the conditional formatting with below rule:
- =ISERROR(DAY($C3))
Download example workbook
Click here to download a simple example workbook with this technique. Examine the conditional formatting in C3 & D3 to learn more.
Do you use CF to nudge your users in right direction?
Excel Conditional Formatting is one of my all time favourite features. I use liberal amounts of CF on all my Excel recipes. I think CF makes a great ingredient if you are collecting user inputs.
What about you? Do you use conditional formatting to make sure your inputs are clean? What techniques do you use? Please share your thoughts and tips in the comments area.
Here are few more awesome ways to use conditional formatting:
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