Obtain cell fill color and delete cell values based on that color

Question

I am new completely new to coding in excel (2013) VB and I need to write some code to do the following:

I have a 2013 workbook with multiple tabs. I need to delete values (could be hard coded numbers, categorical data [eg, "Yes/No"], or formulas) from only SOME of these tabs (let's say tabs X and Y) based upon cell fill color .

1) First, how do I obtain the color index or, more specifically the color index property (I might not be using the exact correct terminology here)? I assume I need to get this exact number from a function and then plug this number into some sub to delete the conditioned values.

2) Then, how do I use that value to write a sub (?) that will delete all the values in that specific cell color for tabs X an Y?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

A cell's color property is held in the cell's interior object. To get the color from cell B3 in Tab 'X' you could do:

 Dim cellColor as Long
 cellColor = Sheets("X").Range("B3").Interior.Color

Now the cell's color is held in variable cellColor .

This color property is a little oddball though. It's a numeric representation of the RGB, taking the form: (R*256^2 + G*256 + B) Kind of like a bitmask, but at the byte level. Check out the function in the second answer here for a great way to get at these values if you need them.

Really your best bet is to paint a cell, then run a macro to tell you what the color code is.

Pretending like you want to delete everything in Sheet X Range A1:Z5000 that are colored red (65535), you could do something like:

 Dim checkCell as Range 'cells are range objects


 For each checkCell in Sheet("X").Range("A1:Z5000").Cells 'loop through all the cells assigning the cell in each iteration to variable checkCell
      If checkCell.Interior.Color = 65535 Then 'is it red?
          checkCell.ClearContents 'null out the value
      End If
 Next checkCell