Month: December 2018

Identify Special Characters that can be used to generate valid Excel Range Names

There are times when evaluating a client’s workbook that it becomes convenient to add an organized set of unique range names.
These new range names provide a detailed level of control and simply the effort to re-engineer the targeted workbook.
Using special characters to create these new names makes it very easy to manage, control and ultimately remove them from the project without disturbing the original range names.
Here is a link to a workbook that identifies these special characters either as the beginning of a range name or in the middle of a range name.
There is also a link to a PDF report as well.

Suggestions for personalizing the Excel VBA Editor

A sample of my view of VBA Source Code.

Code Example

Always enable Require Variable Declaration.

Do not enable the automatic syntax checker. It will only interrupt your train of thought while you are working with and manipulating your VBA source code.

primary excel vba options

To make your code more visible select the Lucida Console (Western) FONT.

Select Lucida Console font

The Lucida Console Western makes it much easier to distinguish:(1;i;I;l;L).

The digit One; the lowercase “eye”; the uppercase “eye”; the lowercase “ell” and the uppercase ‘ell”.

To make the VBA keywords standout display them in RED. RED is far more visible than the default BLUE.

Keywords in RED

To keep track of syntax errors display them in MAGENTA.

Syntax Errors in Magenta