Ronald has a worksheet that utilizes conditional formatting. The conditions result in the cells being different colors. He wants to count the number of cells that are red in the worksheet. He knows how to create a macro that will examine the cell color and do a count if a cell is formatted directly as red, but the macro won't work with cells that are conditionally formatted. Ronald wants to know if there is a way to count these conditionally red cells, as well.
You cannot directly check in a macro what the color of a cell is based on a conditional format. There are ways you can work around this with a macro, but it is not for the faint-of-heart. The following page on Chip Pearson's site demonstrates the difficulty in determining conditional colors:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CFColors.htm
Given the difficulty of the task, it may just be easier to recreate the conditions within the macro, and then see which cells meet these conditions. The result is that you count cells matching conditions rather than count cells that are colored red as a result of those conditions. This should yield the same count of cells, but is much easier to handle programmatically.
Of course, the only caveat to this solution is that you will need to keep the conditions in the macro and the conditions in the conditional formats in sync with each other. If you change one and fail to change the other, then you won't get the desired results.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2873) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.
Save Time and Supercharge Excel! Automate virtually any routine task and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! Mastering advanced Excel macros has never been easier. Check out Excel 2010 VBA and Macros today!
If you need to shade alternating rows in a data table, you'll want to examine how you can accomplish the task with ...
Discover MoreConditional formatting is a great feature for making the data in your worksheets more understandable and usable. What if ...
Discover MoreConditional formatting is a great feature in Excel. Here's how you can copy conditional formats from one cell to another ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments