vba programming-xl

Hi All

Can someone please tel me about the below three terms and when to use them . I have commonly seen them in excel vba code


1) XLdown, xlsolid, xlautomatic...... .. The list is huge i guess, where can i get all the list and when to use them


2) Selection : why do use this and when. I could see some examples like
Selection.Interior.ColorIndex
Selection.Interior.Pattern

What i observed that when i type selection. i dont get any list which is prepopulated even after i type interior its the same
so how can we know what to type after selection.

3) With - When to use this and what for.

I know point 2 & 3 seems like general english terms but how to know more about them and their usage in programming

xl means excel is understood but what is this down/solid /automatic

can some briefly explain about these three.

thanx for u r time

xlDown traverses down a column until the last used or unused cell
xlSolid is more commonly used for colours
xlAutomatic is another property for colours but I am unsure as to exactly what it does.

Selection is an interesting subject. More experienced programmers do not use a selection statement unless there is a cell that needs to be selected. Using Selection makes Excel work a lot harder and also can make your screen jumpy. Your example could be re written with a range variable like:

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If you declare Sheet Names, Range Variables, and other variables, you will be more likely to have that list pop up while typing code. For Instance:

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Use With when you need to work on a range (for instance) but perform multiple actions on it like above. If we weren't to use them on the above, you would have to type out each line explicitly like:

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Hopefully this helps a little.

xlAutomatic = returns the default excel font color which is black.
xlDown tells excel which way to look for example to find the last used cell, before a blank in a Column:

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x in this case is the last cell in column A with a value
xlSolid - has to do with the way a cell is filled when formatting = to answer your with as well - with allows you to work with a range to do various things and will shorten you code - in this case formatting

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By using the With Command I can apply formatting to a range and shorten the amount of code otherwise I would have to write

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The xlSolid tells excel to format the cells in the range A2:B2 to color the cells with no pattern just solid yellow. It is equivalent to going format cells and selecting a background color with no pattern.
The Selection term is used too much however with the example above you could have written

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Select simply selects the range and then the Selection command refers to what you have selected. Really there is very little need to ever select - By using the select command I had to write an extra line of unnecessary code so avoid using Select and Activate. You will notice that if you use the macro recorder that it will write code very much like the last example however it writes what the user does and when you are recording a macro and then you select a range of cells then the macro recorder writes that to the macro - the macro recorder is good however you often end up with superfluous code. When you are learning it is good to look at the code generated and then see if you can shorten the code.
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