VBA Function - beginner

Hi

I just begun using VBA

I wrote a function to extract a text item from a single row or single column of data entries. The text item chosesn is a numbered item and all non text is ignored. So if the list consisted of "AA","BB"," ","DD","EE" say then the input agruments (3,list) to the function would generate the result DD and similarly (2,list) would generate the result BB.

I wrote the function "nonzerotext" and the test harness subroutine "showtext" to display the output in a message box. This worked.

However, the function does not work alone in the spreadsheet. Any ideas.

See function and test harness below.

Private Function nonzerotext(listpos As Integer, List As Range) As String

Dim firstrow As Integer
Dim lastrow As Integer
Dim firstcolumn As Integer
Dim rowcounter As Integer
Dim numdetected As Integer

firstrow = List.Row

lastrow = List.Row + List.Count - 1

firstcolumn = List.Column

numdetected = 0

For rowcounter = firstrow To lastrow
    
    If WorksheetFunction.IsText(List([rowcounter], [firstcolumn])) Then
        numdetected = numdetected + 1
        If numdetected = listpos Then
            nonzerotext = List([rowcounter], [firstcolumn])
        End If
    End If

Next rowcounter

End Function


Sub showtext()
 
 Dim textis As String
    
    textis = nonzerotext(5, Range("A1:A10"))
        
    MsgBox textis
    
End Sub