- The Range Object
- Using the Top-Left and Bottom-Right Corners of a Selection to Specify a Range
- Referencing Ranges in Other Sheets
- Referencing a Range Relative to Another Range
- Using the Cells Property to Select a Range
- Using the Offset Property to Refer to a Range
- Using the Resize Property to Change the Size of a Range
- Using the Columns and Rows Properties to Specify a Range
- Using the Union Method to Join Multiple Ranges
- Using the Intersect Method to Create a New Range from Overlapping Ranges
- Using the IsEmpty Function to Check Whether a Cell Is Empty
- Using the CurrentRegion Property to Quickly Select a Data Range
- Using the Areas Collection to Return a Non-contiguous Range
- Next Steps
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using the Cells Property to Select a Range
The Cells property refers to all the cells of the specified range object, which can be a worksheet or a range of cells. For example, this line selects all the cells of the active sheet:
Cells.Select
Using the Cells property with the Range object may seem redundant:
Range("A1:D5").Cells
The line refers to the original Range object. But the Cells property has a property, Item, which makes the Cells property very useful. The Item property enables you to refer to a specific cell relative to the Range object.
The syntax for using the Item property with the Cells object is
Cells.Item(Row,Column)
You must use a numeric value for Row, but you may use the numeric value or string value for Column. Both the following lines refer to cell C5:
Cells.Item(5,"C") Cells.Item(5,3)
Because the Item property is the default property of the Range object, you can shorten these lines to
Cells(5,"C") Cells(5,3)
The ability to use numeric values for parameters is especially useful if you need to loop through rows or columns. The macro recorder usually uses something like Range("A1").Select for a single cell and Range("A1:C5").Select for a range of cells. If you are learning to code simply from the recorder, then you might be tempted to write code like
FinalRow = Range("A65536").End(xlUp).Row
For i = 1 to FinalRow
Range("A" & i & ":E" & i).Font.Bold = True
Next i
This little piece of code, which loops through rows and bolds the cells in Columns A to E is awkward to read and write. But, how else can you do it?
FinalRow = Cells(65536,1).End(xlUp).Row For i = 1 to FinalRow Cells(i,"A").Resize(,5).Font.Bold = True Next i
Instead of trying to type out the range address, the new code uses the Cells and Resize properties to find the required cell based on the active cell.
Using the Cells Property in the Range Property
You can use Cells properties as parameters in the Range property. The following refers to range A1:E5:
Range(Cells(1,1),Cells(5,5))
This is especially useful when you need to specify your variables with a parameter, as in the previous looping example.