Jack Huang – Blog

Excel does not provide facilities for sorting or filtering a range of cells by the colour of the cells, or for counting the instances of a particular colour. Here is a User Defined Functions(UDF) that will do the trick.

This UDF will return an array of colorindex values that can be used in standard worksheet functions. For exapmle: ColorIndex(A1)

To create a new UDF in Excel 2007, open Developer -> Visual Basic Editor -> Insert -> Module

'---------------------------------------------------------------------
' ColorIndex Function
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
' Function:    Returns the colorindex of the supplied range
' Synopsis:    Initially, gets a colorindex value for black and white
'              from the activeworkbook colour palette
'              Then works through each cell in  the supplied range and
'              determines the colorindex, and adds to array
'              Finishes by returning acumulated array
' Variations:  Determines cell colour (interior) or text colour (font)
'              Default is cell colour
' Constraints: Does not count colours set by conditional formatting
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
' Author:      Bob Phillips
'              Additions for ranges suggested by Harlan Grove
'---------------------------------------------------------------------


'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Function ColorIndex(rng As Range, _
                    Optional text As Boolean = False) As Variant
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dim cell As Range, row As Range
Dim i As Long, j As Long
Dim iWhite As Long, iBlack As Long
Dim aryColours As Variant

    If rng.Areas.Count > 1 Then
        ColorIndex = CVErr(xlErrValue)
        Exit Function
    End If

    iWhite = WhiteColorindex(rng.Worksheet.Parent)
    iBlack = BlackColorindex(rng.Worksheet.Parent)

    If rng.Cells.Count = 1 Then
        If text Then
            aryColours = DecodeColorIndex(rng, True, iBlack)
        Else
            aryColours = DecodeColorIndex(rng, False, iWhite)
        End If

    Else
        aryColours = rng.Value
        i = 0

        For Each row In rng.Rows
            i = i + 1
            j = 0

            For Each cell In row.Cells
                j = j + 1

                If text Then
                    aryColours(i, j) = _
                      DecodeColorIndex(cell,True,iBlack)
                Else
                    aryColours(i, j) = _
                      DecodeColorIndex(cell,False,iWhite)
                End If

            Next cell

        Next row

    End If

    ColorIndex = aryColours

End Function

'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Function WhiteColorindex(oWB As Workbook)
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dim iPalette As Long
    WhiteColorindex = 0
    For iPalette = 1 To 56
        If oWB.Colors(iPalette) = &HFFFFFF Then
            WhiteColorindex = iPalette
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next iPalette
End Function

'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Function BlackColorindex(oWB As Workbook)
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dim iPalette As Long
    BlackColorindex = 0
    For iPalette = 1 To 56
        If oWB.Colors(iPalette) = &H0 Then
            BlackColorindex = iPalette
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next iPalette
End Function

'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Function DecodeColorIndex(rng As Range, _
                                  text As Boolean, _
                                  idx As Long)
'---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dim iColor As Long
    If text Then
        iColor = rng.font.ColorIndex
    Else
        iColor = rng.Interior.ColorIndex
    End If
    If iColor < 0 Then
        iColor = idx
    End If
    DecodeColorIndex = iColor
End Function

'---------------------------------------------------------------------
' End of ColorIndex Function
'---------------------------------------------------------------------