Finding the Address of the Lowest Value in a Range

When writing a macro, you can find the lowest value in a range of cells by using the WorksheetFunction method to apply the MIN worksheet function. You may need, however, to not only find the lowest value in the range, but also the address of the first cell that contains that value.

One simple way is to simply step through the range you want to examine and derive both the lowest value and the address of the cell being examined, as in the following:

Function FindLowestAddr(pRng As Range) As String
    Application.Volatile
    MinVal = pRng.Cells(1).Value
    MinAddr = pRng.Cells(1).Address
    For Each c in pRng
        If c.Value < MinVal Then
            MinVal = c.Value
            MinAddr = c.Address
        End If
    Next c
    FindLowestAddr = MinAddr
End Function

Note that this approach doesn't rely upon the MIN worksheet function at all. There is a drawback to it, however—it doesn't differentiate between cells that contain numeric values and those that don't. In other words, if the range passed to the function contains a blank cell, that cell is considered to contain a zero value, which may very well be the lowest value in the range.

One way around this is to rely upon worksheet functions from within the macro. The following macro uses both the MIN and MATCH worksheet functions to determine the location of the minimum value and then the index (offset) of that cell within the range.

Function GetAddr(rng As Range) As String
    Dim dMin As Double
    Dim lIndex As Long
    Dim sAddress As String

    Application.Volatile
    With Application.WorksheetFunction
        dMin = .Min(rng)
        lIndex = .Match(dMin, rng, 0)
    End With
    GetAddr = rng.Cells(lIndex).Address
End Function

It should be noted that if you are using the macro only to discover the address because you figured there was no way to derive the desired information without the macro, then you can do away with the macro entirely by using a worksheet formula. For instance, if you want to determine the address of the lowest-valued cell in the named range MyRange, you could use the following:

=ADDRESS(ROW(MyRange)+MATCH(MIN(MyRange),MyRange,0)-1,COLUMN(MyRange))

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (7140) 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: Finding the Address of the Lowest Value in a Range.