Question

I am trying to use VBA in Excel to add conditional formatting to a column of a pivot table. The issue is that whenever the pivot table is refreshed, or a filter is changed, etc. the conditional formatting is lost. My solution was to add a macro to the pivot table update event in the workbook, which works … kinda. It seems that when I run the code that creates the pivot table and adds the code to handle conditional formatting an error occurs but ONLY when the VBA window is NOT open. If the VBA window is open the code executes normally – despite no code changes or reference changes.

Private Sub setupConditionalFormattingForStatusColumn()
    Dim thisSheetModule As vbcomponent
    Dim formattingCodeString As String

    On Error GoTo conditionalFormattingError

    formattingCodeString = _
    "Private Sub Worksheet_PivotTableUpdate(ByVal Target As PivotTable)" & vbNewLine & _
    "    With Target.parent.Columns(" & harReportColumn("Status") & ")" & vbNewLine & _
    "         .FormatConditions.AddIconSetCondition" & vbNewLine & _
    "         .FormatConditions(.FormatConditions.Count).SetFirstPriority" & vbNewLine & _
    vbNewLine & _
    "         With .FormatConditions(1)" & vbNewLine & _
    "              .IconSet = ActiveWorkbook.IconSets(xl4TrafficLights)" & vbNewLine & _
    "              .IconCriteria(1).Icon = xlIconYellowExclamation" & vbNewLine & _
    vbNewLine & _
    "              With .IconCriteria(2) " & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Type = xlConditionValueNumber" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .value = -1" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Operator = 5" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Icon = xlIconGreenCircle" & vbNewLine & _
    "              End With" & vbNewLine & _
    vbNewLine & _
    "              With .IconCriteria(3)" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Type = xlConditionValueNumber" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .value = 1.05" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Operator = 7" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Icon = xlIconYellowCircle" & vbNewLine & _
    "              End With" & vbNewLine
    formattingCodeString = formattingCodeString & vbNewLine & _
    "              With .IconCriteria(4)" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Type = xlConditionValueNumber" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .value = 1.15" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Operator = 7" & vbNewLine & _
    "                   .Icon = xlIconRedCircleWithBorder" & vbNewLine & _
    "              End With" & vbNewLine & _
    vbNewLine & _
    "             .ShowIconOnly = True" & vbNewLine & _
    "         End With" & vbNewLine & _
    vbNewLine & _
    "         .HorizontalAlignment = xlCenter" & vbNewLine & _
    "         .VerticalAlignment = xlCenter" & vbNewLine & _
    "     End With" & vbNewLine & _
    "End Sub"

    Set thisSheetModule = ThisWorkbook.VBProject.VBComponents(harReportSheet.CodeName)
    thisSheetModule.CodeModule.AddFromString formattingCodeString

    Exit Sub

conditionalFormattingError:
    errorLog.logError "WARNING: An error occured while applying the conditional formatting code for the ""Status"" column."
    Err.Clear
    Resume Next
End Sub

The line which generates the error is: thisSheetModule.CodeModule.AddFromString formattingCodeString but the error is only generated if the VBA window is closed.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

So I was able to find an answer to this issue. Evidently Excel does not properly initialize the codename property of newly created worksheets when the VBA window is not open (the why here is beyond me) but only when it recompiles. A work-around is to force Excel to recompile prior to any calls to the codename property. The solution which worked for me was to place the following code:

On Error Resume Next
Application.VBE.CommandBars.ActiveMenuBar.FindControl(ID:=578).Execute
On Error GoTo conditionalFormattingError

above the line beginning with Set thisSheetModule = ... . Oddly enough the line of code which forces the recompile also throws an error for me which I was able to safely ignore with the surrounding error handling.

More information can be found here: http://www.office-archive.com/2-excel/d334bf65aeafc392.htm

Hope that helps someone out there. 🙂