VBA Range Select Method

What is the Select method of Range

The Select method of VBA range can be used to select a cell or range of cells.

In the selected cells, you may perform various tasks e.g. setting the font name, making it bold/italic, etc., setting the background color of the selection, and others.

An example of Select method to select a cell

We will select a cell by using the Select method in an empty active sheet:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("C3").Select

End Sub

Output:

Selecting multiple cells example

In the example below, cells from A2 to D6 are selected:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("A2:D6").Select

End Sub

Output:

Selecting a column

You may use the following code to select one column (B in that case):

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("B:B").Select

End Sub

Result:

Select multiple columns

Similarly, multiple columns can be given to be selected by using Range’s select method:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("B:D").Select

End Sub

Result:

Selecting single row example

Single or multiple rows can be selected by providing the number of row in double-quotes.

For selecting row number 3:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("3:3").Select

End Sub

Result:

Multiple rows selection

Selecting row number 5 to 12 in the code below:

Sub select_ex()

Range("5:12").Select

End Sub

Output:

Selecting non-adjacent rows, columns, cells example

Nonadjacent rows, columns, or cells can also be selected easily.

Just separate the cells, columns or rows ranges by a comma. Let us look at all of these non-contiguous selections:

Non-adjacent rows:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("2:4, 7:9").Select

End Sub

Non-adjacent columns

Sub select_ex()

Range("B:C, G:I").Select

End Sub

Result:

Non-adjacent cells:

Sub select_ex()

Range("A2:C6, B9:E12").Select

End Sub

Result:

Even more, than two ranges can also be given:

Sub select_ex()

Range("A2:C6, B9:E12, A16:D15").Select

End Sub

Result:

Selecting all cells example

You may select all cells in the active sheet as follows:

Cells.Select

Select with Offset

Suppose we want to select a range omitting the heading row. You can use Offset with Select method for omitting as shown below:

Code:

Sub select_ex()

Range("A1:D7").Offset(1, 0).Select

End Sub

Result:

A few examples of Select usage

Now let us look at the usage of the Select method in sheets. We will set the Interior/background color of the selected range, borders, font bold, italic, etc. in the examples below.

So, let us do this one by one.

Setting the interior color of the selected range

Sub select_ex()

Range("B2:E7").Select

Selection.Interior.ColorIndex = 5

End Sub

Result:

Border color example in columns range

Sub select_ex()

Range("D:F").Select

Selection.Borders.ColorIndex = 17

End Sub

Output:

Bold text for row number 6

Sub select_ex()

Range("6:6").Select

Selection.Font.Bold = True


End Sub

Output:

Making text italic for the Price column

Sub select_ex()

Range("C:C").Select

Selection.Font.Italic = True


End Sub

Output:

Changing the Red Color text of the Status column (D)

Sub select_ex()

Range("D:D").Select

Selection.Font.Color = RGB(255, 0, 0)

End Sub

output: