Subscribe
in a reader
Styles in Excel
VBA examples and tools
The little VBA routines shown below will greatly easy your work with styles. As an important side effect, these also show you how the style object works in VBA.
Find cells with a certain style
This routine find cells with a style containing "demo" in its name:
Dim oSh As Worksheet
Dim oCell As Range
For Each oSh In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
For Each oCell In oSh.UsedRange.Cells
If oCell.Style Like "*demo*" Then
Application.GoTo oCell
Stop
End If
Next
Next
End Sub
As soon as a cell is encountered with a style that matches that name filter, the code stops (Stop) and you can check out the cell in detail.
Creating a list of styles
This sub adds a table of your styles on a worksheet named "Config - Styles":
Dim oSt As Style
Dim oCell As Range
Dim lCount As Long
Dim oStylesh As Worksheet
Set oStylesh = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Config - Styles")
With oStylesh
lCount = oStylesh.UsedRange.Rows.Count + 1
For Each oSt In ThisWorkbook.Styles
On Error Resume Next
Set oCell = Nothing
Set oCell = Intersect(oStylesh.UsedRange, oStylesh.Range("A:A")).Find(oSt.Name, _
oStylesh.Range("A1"), xlValues, xlWhole, , , False)
If oCell Is Nothing Then
lCount = lCount + 1
.Cells(lCount, 1).Style = oSt.Name
.Cells(lCount, 1).Value = oSt.NameLocal
.Cells(lCount, 2).Style = oSt.Name
End If
Next
End With
End Sub
Clear all formatting of cells and re-apply their styles
The code below removes all formatting of all cells and subsequently re-applies their style to them.
Watch out: if you have not adhered to using styles strictly, you will lose all formatting in your file!!!
'Resets styles of cells to their original style (resets all formatting done on top of ANY style)
Dim oCell As Range
Dim oSh As Worksheet
If MsgBox("Proceed with care:" & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _
"This routine will erase all formatting done on top of the existing cell styles." & vbNewLine & _
"Continue?", vbCritical + vbOKCancel + vbDefaultButton2, GSAPPNAME) = vbOK Then
For Each oSh In ActiveWindow.SelectedSheets
For Each oCell In oSh.UsedRange.Cells
If oCell.MergeArea.Cells.Count = 1 Then
oCell.Style = CStr(oCell.Style)
End If
Next
Next
End If
End Sub
Replace one style with another
The code below uses a list with two columns. The column on the left contains the names of existing styles. The column to its immediate right contains the names of the style you want to replace them with.
The code will run through the selected cells in the left column and check if the style name in the column to its right differs. If so, it will prompt you with the alternative name. Clicking OK will cause the code to update ALL cells to which the old style was applied to the new style. Before running this sub you need to select the cells in the left hand column.
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Procedure : FixStyles
' Company : JKP Application Development Services (c)
' Author : Jan Karel Pieterse
' Created : 4-10-2007
' Purpose : Replaces styles with the replacement style as defined by a two column list.
' column 1 should contain the existing style, col 2 the replacing style
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dim sOldSt As String
Dim sNewSt As String
Dim oSh As Worksheet
Dim oCell As Range
Dim oSourceCell As Range
Set oSourceCell = ActiveCell
While oSourceCell.Value <> ""
sOldSt = oSourceCell.Value
sNewSt = InputBox("Please enter replacement style for:" & sOldSt, "Style changer", oSourceCell.Offset(, 1).Value)
If sNewSt = "" Then Exit Sub
If sNewSt <> "" And sNewSt <> sOldSt Then
For Each oSh In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
For Each oCell In oSh.UsedRange
If oCell.Style = sOldSt Then
Application.GoTo oCell
On Error Resume Next
oCell.Style = sNewSt
End If
Next
Next
End If
Set oSourceCell = oSourceCell.Offset(1)
Wend
End Sub
Removing formating from an Excel Table
Suppose you have just converted a range to a table (see this article), but the range had some formatting set up such as background fills and borders. Tables allow you to format things like that automatically, but now your preexisting formatting messes up the table formatting. One way to overcome this is by changing the style of the cells in the table back to the Normal style. This however removes your number formats too. The little macro below fixes that by first making a copy of the normal style, setting its Number checkbox to false and then applying the new style without number format to the table. Finally it applies the tablestyle and deletes the temporary style:
Dim oStNormalNoNum As Style
On Error Resume Next
Set oStNormalNoNum = ActiveWorkbook.Styles("NormalNoNum")
On Error GoTo 0
If oStNormalNoNum Is Nothing Then
ActiveWorkbook.Styles.Add "NormalNoNum"
Set oStNormalNoNum = ActiveWorkbook.Styles("NormalNoNum")
oStNormalNoNum.IncludeNumber = False
End If
With ActiveSheet.ListObjects(1)
.Range.Style = "NormalNoNum"
'Now apply tablestyle:
.TableStyle = "TableStyleLight1"
End With
ActiveWorkbook.Styles("NormalNoNum").Delete
End Sub
Comments
Showing last 8 comments of 59 in total (Show All Comments):Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (13-7-2017 11:32:25)
The reason I stated it would be slow is that you would have to use a modified version of the FindAStyle routine (turn it into a function for instance) which is shown at the top of this page:
Dim oSh As Worksheet
Dim oCell As Range
For Each oSh In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
For Each oCell In oSh.UsedRange.Cells
If oCell.Style =sStyleName Then
IsStyleInUse = True
Exit Function
End If
Next
Next
End Sub
So for each style you have, you would have the function run through all the used cells in all the worksheets in the workbook, making this relatively slow.
Comment by: Alex Fang (19-5-2018 04:48:05)
Is there any way to create the new styles based on the selected cell's style. Now my code is stupid that I have to get the style of the cell and set the same for the new styles.
Is there any quicker way? In excel, if I select one cell and create the new style, the new style is automatically created based on the selected cell. I try to record the Macro in excel but seams not successful. Can you help me?
Comment by: Alex Fang (19-5-2018 05:08:58)
I solve my problem, thanks.
Comment by: Skumar (4-7-2018 11:01:33)
Thanks in advance.
Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (4-7-2018 11:43:39)
I'm afraid you cannot do that.
Comment by: Andy Smith (22-8-2018 21:44:51)
I've written a bunch of code to delete them, unlocking them first, but there are about 2,000+ of the original 43,000+ that just won't go away, even though my code that deletes each one yields no error at all. I even have code to extract the styles.xml file from the xl folder of the zip and replace the entire <cellstyles> block, after which Excel wants to repair the file.
It seems all the ones that stay are the ones whose names begin with spaces and have only digits -- is that a clue?
Thanks in advance for your response
Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (23-8-2018 14:51:47)
Any odd characters in style names are indeed an indication there is something wrong with that style. Same goes for range names.
Comment by: Andy Smith (23-8-2018 19:15:07)
Have a question, comment or suggestion? Then please use this form.
If your question is not directly related to this web page, but rather a more general "How do I do this" Excel question, then I advise you to ask your question here: www.eileenslounge.com.