Knowledge Base

XL97: How to Determine If the Active Cell Contains a Comment

Article ID: 158246

Article Last Modified on 11/23/2006

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q158246

SUMMARY

Microsoft Excel 97 no longer uses cell notes; instead Excel 97 uses cell comments. Consequently, the macro code you use to determine whether a cell contains a comment is different. This article discusses ways to programmatically determine whether a cell contains a comment and discusses compatibility issues with earlier versions of Microsoft Excel.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact a Microsoft Certified Partner or the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about Microsoft Certified Partners, please visit the following Microsoft Web site:

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For more information about the support options that are available and about how to contact Microsoft, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;CNTACTMS

Checking for Cell Notes

In earlier versions of Microsoft Excel you can use a macro, like the following one, to determine whether the active cell contains a cell note:

   Sub Contains_Note()
       If ActiveCell.NoteText = "" Then
           MsgBox "cell has no note"
       Else
          MsgBox ActiveCell.NoteText
       End If
   End Sub

If you run this macro and the active cell does not contain a cell note, a message box displays the message "cell has no note."

NOTE: To support backward compatibility, this macro runs successfully in Microsoft Excel 97, even though it converts all cell notes to cell comments when you open a Microsoft Excel 5.0 or 7.0 file in Microsoft Excel 97.

To ensure that your macro works in all versions of Microsoft Excel that support Visual Basic for Applications, use a macro that is similar to the example provided above.

Checking for Cell Comments

To ensure future compatibility with Microsoft Excel and specifically with cell comments, you may want to use the Comment property in your Visual Basic macro. The following macro uses the Comment property for a Range object to return a Comment object. If the active cell does not have a comment, the Comment property returns Nothing.

   Sub Has_Comment()
       Set mycomment = ActiveCell.Comment
       If mycomment Is Nothing Then
           MsgBox "no comment in cell"
       Else
           MsgBox mycomment.Text
       End If
   End Sub

NOTE: The Has_Comment macro does not work in earlier versions of Microsoft Excel.

Microsoft KB Archive/158246

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