12. Visual Basic If Statements and Do Loops

Open 12b-datastart.xlsm

If statements We have seen how to use IF statements in formulas in Excel IF statements can also be used in Visual Basic but they have a different format The basic format is: If a cell has a value greater than 10 Then Make the font bold ElseIf cell has a value less than 10 Then Make the font italic EndIf Begin with Macro Recorder and then edit

Select Sheet3 and cell D2

Click Record Macro

TypeMacro name: HighlightCells Shortcut key: Ctrl+j

Click OK

Right-click with mouse and select Format Cells

Select Bold Font and click OK

Click Stop Recording

Click Visual Basic

Select Module 2

Excel produces code for all aspects of the font We are only concerned with.FontStyle = “Bold”

Just keep the following lines

We only want Excel to do this when the cell value is greater than 10

If ActiveCell.Value > 10 Then … Endif

Save and Close

Click on cell D3 and press Ctrl+j to run macro

Excel should evaluate the cell and give it a bold font as it has a value above 10

Click Visual Basic

Want to add another condition that if value is less than 10 give it Italic font

ElseIf ActiveCell.Value < 10 Then

Repeat FontStyle code, but change it to Italic

Save and Close

Click Cell E2 and press Ctrl + j to run macro

Font should become Italic

Challenge Edit the Visual Basic code so that there are three conditions If ActiveCell.Value > 20 Then – Font style should be “Bold” ElseIf ActiveCell.Value > 15 Then – Font style should be “Italic” ElseIf ActiveCell.Value < 15 Then – Font style should be “Bold Italic” EndIf

Do Loops We can get Excel to do something repeatedly by setting up a Do … Loop Until … Rather than evaluating one cell at a time we may want to work through all the cells in a row We can tell Excel to evaluate the cell and move to the next cell We then get Excel to repeat this until the next cell is blank

Click Visual Basic

After the If statement we want to select the cell in the next column

Type ActiveCell.Offset(0,1).Select

Click Save and Close

Select cell C4 and press Ctrl+j to run macro

Excel evaluates the cell and moves to the next column

Click Visual Basic

We want Excel to Do this repeatedly until the next cell is empty

Type Do before the If statement

Type Loop Until ActiveCell.Value = “”

Save and Close

Select cell C5 and press Ctrl+j to run macro

Excel repeats the command and evaluates each cell within the row

Excel stops running the command when it finds an empty cell

Challenge Edit the Visual Basic code so that once the end of the row is reached, Excel moves to the beginning of the next row After the Do Loop tell Excel to ActiveCell.Offset(1,-4).Select Then set up another Do Loop so that Excel keeps doing this until the whole table has been evaluated

You now have a Do Loop within a Do Loop

Once the first Do Loop is finished it moves to the next row and keeps going until the next row is empty

Advice Writing programs requires trial and error Use the macro recorder to get most of the code Then edit this code to make it do exactly what you want Download a copy of all these notes ( and refer back to them when you have a particular task to performwww.qubexcel.co.uk The only way to get really confident with Excel and VBA is to use them regularly