Type mismatch in .CheckSpelling in Excel VBA

Question

I'm running the following code on a large data set:

Sub ColorMispelledCells()  
For Each cl In ActiveSheet.UsedRange  
If Not Application.CheckSpelling(Word:=cl.Text) Then _  
cl.Interior.ColorIndex = 28  
Next cl  
End Sub 

It seems to work fine for most of the cells, but a good number of them trigger a Run-time error 13 Type Mismatch. I think the problem is that there are some weird characters in those cells. I tried find/replacing them but they don't seem to be going away. Here is one of the cells:

;In the following passage from Edgar Allan Poe's '~'The Premature Burial,'~' what word provides a clue to determining the meaning of '~'litterateur?'~';\\\\; Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved... ;

The apostrophes around the ~ characters seem to be non-standard apostrophes, but when I copy it from the cell and find/replace with "", it doesn't go away.

Are these special characters causing the mismatch? If so, is there a way to get around them without stripping the cells of punctuation entirely? We need the text in the cell to be roughly the same as before.

Answer 1

The error is not because of those special characters. It is because of the length of the string that you are passing in cl.text . The limit is 255 characters

Type a very long error free sentence which has more than 255 characters in an Excel cell and you will still get the Type Mismatch error.

This will work ( 255 characters)

This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sent

but this will fail ( 256 characters)

This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sentence This is a simple sente