Get A List Of Excel Cells Where The Cell Name Contains A Substring

Question

In VB or C# using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel how do I do the following?

I have an excel sheet with names assigned to each cell and I'm trying to get a list of cells where the name contains a certain substring. Maybe something like this:

worksheet.Cells.Where(x => x.Name.Contains("_"));

I can't figure out how to do this since worksheet.Cells is a range and not a collection. Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

In VBA, you can iterate through the Names collection. All of the Names are a property of the Workbook collection; in addition, those Names with a worksheet scope, will also be in that Worksheet Names Collection.

So to return a list, depending on what you want to do with the list, one method is with a User Defined Function:

---

Option Explicit
Function GetNames(sContains As String) As Variant
    Dim WB As Workbook
    Dim N As Name, NS As Names
    Dim colNames As Collection
    Dim V() As Variant
    Dim I As Long

Set WB = ThisWorkbook
Set NS = WB.Names
Set colNames = New Collection
ReDim V(0 To 1)
For Each N In NS
    If N Like "*" & sContains & "*" Then
        V(0) = N.Name
        V(1) = N.RefersTo
        colNames.Add V
    End If
Next N

ReDim V(1 To colNames.Count, 1 To 2)
For I = 1 To colNames.Count
    V(I, 1) = colNames(I)(0)
    V(I, 2) = colNames(I)(1)
Next I

GetNames = V

End Function

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Answer 2

I had to solve a similar problem once and used:

currentFind is a ExcelRange.

currentFind =  mySheet.UsedRange.Find("_", misvalue,
            Excel.XlFindLookIn.xlValues, Excel.XlLookAt.xlPart,
            Excel.XlSearchOrder.xlByRows, Excel.XlSearchDirection.xlNext, false,
                misvalue, misvalue);