Question

I know VBA in Excel isn’t the quickest of things – but I need the most efficient (i.e. quickest) way to loop through a large sample of rows.

Currently I have:

For Each c In Range("$A$2:$A$" & Cells(Rows.count, "A").End(xlUp).row
    ' do stuff
Next c

The ‘do stuff’ includes insert a row here and there (so I need to keep the dynamic lookup of the range.)

Any ideas (looking at 10,000 rows+)?

EDIT
I am already using

Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Calculation = xlManual

Answer 1

If you are just looping through 10k rows in column A, then dump the row into a variant array and then loop through that.

You can then either add the elements to a new array (while adding rows when needed) and using Transpose() to put the array onto your range in one move, or you can use your iterator variable to track which row you are on and add rows that way.

Dim i As Long
Dim varray As Variant

varray = Range("A2:A" & Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row).Value

For i = 1 To UBound(varray, 1)
    ' do stuff to varray(i, 1)
Next

Here is an example of how you could add rows after evaluating each cell. This example just inserts a row after every row that has the word “foo” in column A. Not that the “+2” is added to the variable i during the insert since we are starting on A2. It would be +1 if we were starting our array with A1.

Sub test()

Dim varray As Variant
Dim i As Long

varray = Range("A2:A10").Value

'must step back or it'll be infinite loop
For i = UBound(varray, 1) To LBound(varray, 1) Step -1
    'do your logic and evaluation here
    If varray(i, 1) = "foo" Then
       'not how to offset the i variable 
       Range("A" & i + 2).EntireRow.Insert
    End If
Next

End Sub