Question

So, it’s a new week, and I’ve got new ideas for improving things. Part of what I do is send out reports to individual offices and departments all over the place; these offices in turn are supposed to go through the information and note inconsistencies. As with everything in life, this turns out to be more trouble than anything else. In an effort to make it a little bit more painless (I hope) I want to try somethinga little different for them. What I would like to do is set up something within the worksheet that the individuals receive that does two things:

1. First, I would like to set up the worksheet so that when the user
   clicks on a cell the cell is highlighted;
2. Second, after the cell highlights then the activebox would
   automatically transfer to a “comments” box at the end of the row
   where the user would enter their comments as to why the cell in
   question was highlighted; and
3. Third, assuming that someone will make a mistake and highlight
   something by mistake I would like to add the additional function
   that if a user selects a cell that is highlighted then it would
   clear the highlight from the cell.

Possible? Suggestions? Thanks!

Answer 1

JMax is correct in identifying the flaw in that you cannot edit a cell if it changes color and selects a comments cell every time you click on it. The best way around this problem is to change the color only on double-click. I would also define the selected row/column and see if they fall within a table’s range (instead of using Application.Intersect) but that’s just personal preference

Something like…

Private Sub Worksheet_Beforedoubleclick(ByVal target As Range, cancel As Boolean)

Application.EnableEvents = False

Dim TargRow as Variant
Dim TargCol as Variant

TargRow = target.Row
TargCol = target.Column

'Define Header, FirstCol, CommentCol, LastCol as required to define your table/range where you wish these changes to be made. CommentCol is the cell in which comments should be made

    If TargRow > Header And TargCol > FirstCol and TargCol < LastCol Then
        If Cells(TargRow,TargCol).Interior.ColorIndex <> -4142 Then 'change color as required to match background
        Cells(TargRow,TargCol).Interior.ColorIndex = 3 'change color as required; this makes them red
        Cells(TargRow,CommentCol).Select
        Else
        Cells(TargRow,TargCol).Interior.ColorIndex = -4142 'match color from start of IF statement
        End If
    End If

Application.EnableEvents = True
End Sub

Note that we disable events so no other code can be triggered by us selecting a different cell. This is an absolute necessity when implementing the Worksheet_SelectionChange event, less so with the BeforeDoubleClick event

It’s very important to consider how you trigger macros and how they give the user flexibility. This Excel help video provides a reasonable introduction