How to search if all the values in an array in present in a cell, using vba

Question

I have an array of names stored in column a in Sheet 2. Say John, Smith, Bob, Peter, William. I need to check a cell in Sheet 1 and see what name is comes last in that cell.

Suppose the content in Sheet1, A1 is "William came home early. Smith rang the bel and Bob opened the door to see if that was Peter". In this, my requirement are, which all names contained in this sentence in A1 cell and whose name came last in this. Obviously it's Peter and I need it to be returned using vba.

I have written a macro using InStrRev function and using MyNames array which contains the names. However it searches the name in array in descending order only.

InStrRev(Range("t" & r).Value, MyNames(t), -1, vbTextCompare)

Answer 1

You could use a function to return the last used name.

The function works as a Worksheet function or VBA as it returns a String(name)

Function LastUsedName(rng As Range) As String

    Dim names As Variant
    names = Sheets(2).Range("A1:A" & Sheets(2).Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row)

    Dim cell As Range, i As Long, j As Long
    Dim arr As Variant
    arr = Split(rng, Chr(32))

    For j = UBound(arr) To LBound(arr) Step -1
        For i = LBound(names) To UBound(names)
            If names(i, 1) = arr(j) Then
                LastUsedName = names(i, 1)
                Exit Function
            End If
        Next i
    Next j

End Function

so

Sheet1 cell A1

Sheet2 column A

if you stick the function name in any cell then

Answer 2

you need to store the return value from that function somewhere, and then return the value that corresponds to the last position.

I'm assuming you're using t to loop through the names.

add in these lines:

dim BigPos as long
dim BigLoc as long
dim CurrentPos as long

then alter your loop to actually remember which was the name it found furthest along the string

BigPos=0
BigLoc=0 ' set to zero, so no old checks can be found

for t=lbound(MyNames) to ubound(MyNames)
    currentpos=InStrRev(Range("t" & r).Value, MyNames(t), -1, vbTextCompare)
    if currenpos>bigpos then 
        'found one of the names *and* 
        'it's further along than the previous found name
        bigpos=currentpos 'remember where in the string we found the text
        bigloc=t 'and remember which name
    end if
next t 'check them all, so there's no exit out of the for loop

then you can display the result:

if bigloc=0 then 
    msgbox "No names found"
else
    msgbox "Name " & MyNames(bigloc) & " found at character " & bigpos
end if