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How to swap two excel ranges using VBA code

3,023 views · Published 16 November 2018 · 7:53 · Indexed 11 October 2026

Channel: Krishna S · 2018 · Science & Technology

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How to swap 2 excel ranges | swap with multiple cells selected
I had created a macro to swap 2 cells values in MS Excel. By just clicking a button a macro could interchange the content of 2 excel cells.  There was a limitation on that macro. It could only work only if the selection is just 2 cells. It could interchange the value of just 2 cells but not the ranges. I used to get a lot of request from my viewers to extend this macro for more than 1 cell. Due to time constraint, I could not work on it.

Excel VBA macro to swap 2 values in cells


Now, I have written another macro which will work on the Excel ranges. This macro is completely different. My original macro was based on area selection. But the new macro is based on the ranges. It is very small and easy to understand, unlike another macro, which is comparatively bigger.

I will explain each of the lines in the macro.

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1. Sub swap_2_ranges()

2. string_all_selected_area = (Selection.Address(ReferenceStyle:=xlA1, RowAbsolute:=False, ColumnAbsolute:=False))


The first line is the subroutine name. The second line gets the string of value of all the ranges selected. The output will be "I23,H25,G22" format. It says 3 ranges are selected. Each range is separated by a comma. I will use this string later to get the ranges.

3. array_selected_area = Split(string_all_selected_area, ",")

The above line splits the multiple ranges into one range and stores them in an array

4. If (UBound(array_selected_area) = 1) Then
5. area1 = array_selected_area(0)

6. area2 = array_selected_area(1)

Then, there is an if condition to check if the selection is suitable for our swap operation. It will not work as expected if we select more than 2 ranges. or less than 2 ranges. Our purpose is to swap or interchange the content of 2 different ranges. So the selection should be exactly 2 ranges.

After this check, the selected ranges are stored in 2 temporary variables.

7. selection_1 = Range(area1)
8. selection_2 = Range(area2)

The variables are converted to Excel ranges. This is very important, as we are not getting selection directly in the Excel range format. Instead, the selection is in text format. The string values should be converted into an Excel range object so that we can apply some Excel VBA functionalities.

9. If Range(area1).Count = Range(area2).Count Then

Then comes one more if condition to check if the selected ranges have the same number of cells. It is obvious that we should have the same number of cells on each selection so that we can interchange their values.

10. Sheets(1).Range(area2) = selection_1
11. Sheets(1).Range(area1) = selection_2

This is actual swapping code. This is achieved through the temporary variables.

12. End If
13. End If

14. End Sub

Finally ending the if conditions and the Subroutine.



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