Selecting a Cell in the Current Row

If you are developing Excel macros, you may wonder how you can select a cell relative to the one in which you are located. For instance, if you are using Excel and you press the Home key, the cell at the left side of the current row is selected. Unfortunately, using the macro recorder to record this does not help in this situation, since it records destination of the action, instead of the your actual action. For instance, if you press Home and you are on the fourth row in a worksheet, Excel doesn't record the Home action, but instead records the destination, as follows:

Range("A4").Select

This is great if you always want to go to cell A4, but terrible if you want to go to the first cell of whatever row you are on.

As with many tasks in VBA, there are several ways you can approach a solution to this dilemma. The first method is actually a variation on what the macro recorder returns, as shown above. All you need to do is change the row designator so it represents the current row, as in the following:

Range("A" & (ActiveCell.Row)).Select

VBA figures out what the current row is, slaps it together with the "A" designator, and comes up with a cell reference that works with the Range method.

Another technique you can use is to put the Cells property to work, as follows:

Cells(Application.ActiveCell.Row, 1).Select

This approach, of course, can be modified so that you actually select any given cell in the current row. All you need to do is change the column designation (1, in the above example) to a number representing the column desired.

Another approach (which produces the same result) is to use the Range object in conjunction with the Cells property, as shown here:

Range(Cells(Selection.Row, 1).Address).Select

Selection.Row gives the row number of the current selection. The Address property of the Cells method returns the address of a particular cell in A$1$ format. This address is then used as the parameter for the Range object, and the actual cell is selected by the Select method.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2267) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Selecting a Cell in the Current Row.