Case Function Equivalent in Excel

Question

I have an interesting challenge - I need to run a check on the following data in Excel:

|   A  -   B  -   C  -  D   |
|------|------|------|------|
|  36  |          


        

Answer 1

If you don't have a SWITCH statement in your Excel version (pre-Excel-2016), here's a VBA implementation for it:

Public Function SWITCH(ParamArray args() As Variant) As Variant
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim val As Variant
    Dim tmp As Variant

    If ((UBound(args) - LBound(args)) = 0) Or (((UBound(args) - LBound(args)) Mod 2 = 0)) Then
        Error 450       'Invalid arguments
    Else
        val = args(LBound(args))
        i = LBound(args) + 1
        tmp = args(UBound(args))

        While (i < UBound(args))
            If val = args(i) Then
                tmp = args(i + 1)
            End If
            i = i + 2
        Wend
    End If

    SWITCH = tmp
End Function

It works exactly like expected, a drop-in replacement for example for Google Spreadsheet's SWITCH function.

Syntax:

=SWITCH(selector; [keyN; valueN;] ...  defaultvalue)

where

• selector is any expression that is compared to keys
• key1, key2, ... are expressions that are compared to the selector
• value1, value2, ... are values that are selected if the selector equals to the corresponding key (only)
• defaultvalue is used if no key matches the selector

Examples:

=SWITCH("a";"?")                       returns "?"
=SWITCH("a";"a";"1";"?")               returns "1"
=SWITCH("x";"a";"1";"?")               returns "?"
=SWITCH("b";"a";"1";"b";TRUE;"?")      returns TRUE
=SWITCH(7;7;1;7;2;0)                   returns 2
=SWITCH("a";"a";"1")                   returns #VALUE!

To use it, open your Excel, go to Develpment tools tab, click Visual Basic, rightclick on ThisWorkbook, choose Insert, then Module, finally copy the code into the editor. You have to save as a macro-friendly Excel workbook (xlsm).