4/7/2015

Excel VBA Programming - String Exercise

Excel VBA Programming

Home
Getting Started
8 part section >>
VBA Programming Variables
6 Part Section >>
Conditional Logic
9 part section >>
Strings and String Functions
Text Strings in Excel VBA
Changing Case
Trim, Len, and Space
Excel VBA Replace
InStr, InStrRev, StrReverse
The Left and Right Functions
The Mid Function
A String Exercise
Programming Loops
4 part section >>
Programming Arrays
4 part section >>
Subs and Functions
6 part section >>
Excel VBA and Text Files
2 part section >>
Excel VBA and User Forms
5 part section >>
An Excel Picture Viewer Project
12 part section >>
Excel VBA and Charts
4 part section >>
A TreeView Project
A 6 part section >>

http://www.homeandlearn.org/a_string_exercise.html

1/4

4/7/2015

Excel VBA Programming - String Exercise

An Excel VBA String Method Exercise

To get some practice with String methods, we're going to work through a problem. Try to solve the
problem yourself before going through the solution below. OK, here's the problem.

Problem
Suppose you had a product code on a spreadsheet that looked like this:
PD-23-23-45
However, it's in the wrong format. First, you're told to remove all the hyphens. Then, you're told to turn
the letters PD in the product code to PDC. So your finished work should look like this:
PDC232345
The question is, how would you do this with Excel VBA code?
If you get stuck solving the problem above, then here's the solution.

http://www.homeandlearn.org/a_string_exercise.html

2/4

4/7/2015

Excel VBA Programming - String Exercise

Solution
The first part of the problem, removing the hyphens, is fairly easy - just use Replace:
Dim ProductCode As String
ProductCode = "PD-23-2345"
ProductCode = Replace(ProductCode, "-", "")
In between the round brackets of Replace we have the text we want to search, which is the variable
called ProductCode. After a comma, we have the character we want to replace, the hyphen. Next, we
have the new character, which is no text at all. This is done with two double quotes with no space
between them.
The second part of the problem, adding the "C" after "PD", would be easy too, if VBA had an Insert
function. But it doesn't. Which makes this part of the problem a little bit harder.
There are a few ways to insert the "C" in the correct place. We'll do it using the Left and Mid string
functions. We'll use Left to grab the first two characters, then add the "C". We'll then use Mid to get the
numbers.
To get the first two characters and add the "C", the code is this:
Dim Letters As String
Letters = Left(ProductCode, 2) & "C"
Starting from the left of ProductCode, we grab two characters:
Left(ProductCode, 2)
The "C" is added with concatenation:
Left(ProductCode, 2) & "C"
The new three letter code is then stored in the variable called Letters.
To get the numbers, use Mid:
Dim Numbers As String
Numbers = Mid(ProductCode, 3)
Mid first needs the string you're searching, which is ProductCode for us. Next, we have 3 as the
starting point to grab characters. This will grab the characters starting from the 3rd character in the
string. Because we haven't specified an end number, Mid will grab the rest of the characters to the end
of the string.
The only thing left to do is to join the two parts together:
Dim NewCode As String
NewCode = Letters & Numbers
MsgBox NewCode
This just uses concatenation to join the Letters variable to the Numbers variable. The final line uses a
message box to display the results. The whole of the code, though, looks like this:

http://www.homeandlearn.org/a_string_exercise.html

3/4

4/7/2015

Excel VBA Programming - String Exercise

When you meet a problem like the one above, the solution is usually to use one of the Left, Right, or
Mid functions (or all of them) to chop the string into pieces and then join them back together again. In
the next lesson, we'll move on and tackle programming loops.

Hands-On IT Training
CCNA, PC repair, MCP, Tesda courses PHP, Java,VB.net programming & more

Loops in Excel VBA >

Lots more free online course here on our main Home and Learn site
All course material copyright Ken Carney

http://www.homeandlearn.org/a_string_exercise.html

4/4