Excel VBA Find Function Side Effect? - excel

Question

All. I am new to VBA and MS EXCEl 2010. I just started to play with the macro module in EXCEL yesterday, almost zero experience.
What I was trying to do is described as follows. First search for value records in a range in sheet1, then for each cell I found, I locate that row and pull out another cell value at that row. Using this value to do another search in a range in sheet2. I'll point out the problem I am having after my code. Here is the pesudcode.
Dim Found As Range
With RangeInSheet1
Set Found = .Find(value1)
If Not Found Is Nothing Then
firstAddress = Found.Address
Do
With RangeInSheet2
ColumnIndex = .Find(value2).Column
End With
Set Found = .FindNext(Found)
Loop While Not Found Is Nothing And Found.Address <> firstAddress
End If
End With
value1 is the key I used to search in RangeSheet1, and value2 in RangeSheet2. The above code goes through every record I found for value1 in sheet 1 and do another search in Sheet2.
Now let's Say value1 = 1, value2 =2007, and there are 5 records that contains value1 in sheet 1. The problem arises from this line of code "ColumnIndex = .Find(value2).Column".
Supposedly, for all the five found records, value of Found should always be 1 after "Set Found = .FindNext(Found)" is executed . But, after I added this ColumnIndex code, value of Found is set to 2007, which is so weird to me. Anyone knows what the problem is? Any help will be appreciate. I really need to keep the Found behaves "normal" as I want.
If anything is unclear, please let me know

Answer 1

.Find/.Findnext remembers the last setting. And hence it is always advisable to completely Specify the parameters. specially After:= parameter. It will also remember what was your last search term i.e What:=
Here is a demonstration on how to work with .Find/.Findnext
Also do not use Value2 as a variable. It is a reserved word. Instead of using Value1 and Value2, I am using sSearch1 and sSearch2 in the below code
Let's say your sheets look like this
Now Try this code
Sub Sample()
Dim ws1 As Worksheet, ws2 As Worksheet
Dim rngWs1 As Range, rngWs2 As Range
Dim aCell As Range, bCell As Range, cCell As Range, dCell As Range, eCell As Range, cl As Range
Dim sSearch1, sSearch2
Set ws1 = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
Set rngWs1 = ws1.Range("A1:A10")
Set ws2 = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet2")
Set rngWs2 = ws2.Cells
With ws1
For i = 1 To 10
sSearch1 = .Range("A" & i).Value
Set aCell = .Range("A" & i)
If Len(Trim(sSearch1)) <> 0 Then
Set aCell = rngWs1.Find(What:=sSearch1, After:=aCell, LookIn:=xlValues, _
LookAt:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False)
If Not aCell Is Nothing Then
sSearch2 = aCell.Offset(, 1).Value
With ws2
Set bCell = rngWs2.Find(What:=sSearch2, After:=.Range("A1"), LookIn:=xlValues, _
LookAt:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False)
If Not bCell Is Nothing Then
Debug.Print "For " & sSearch1 & ", " & sSearch2 & " Found in " & bCell.Address
Set cCell = bCell
Do
Set bCell = rngWs2.FindNext(After:=bCell)
If Not bCell Is Nothing Then
If bCell.Address = cCell.Address Then Exit Do
Debug.Print "For " & sSearch1 & ", " & sSearch2 & " Found in " & bCell.Address
Else
Exit Do
End If
Loop
End If
End With
End If
End If
Next
End With
End Sub
This is the result that we get.