What is the function of FormulaR1C1?

Question

I have been looking at FormulaR1C1 as a function, how does this exactly work? I understand what has been said all over the internet which is stands as Row 1

Answer 1

FormulaR1C1 has the same behavior as Formula, only using R1C1 style annotation, instead of A1 annotation. In A1 annotation you would use:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A5").Formula = "=A4+A10"

In R1C1 you would use:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A5").FormulaR1C1 = "=R4C1+R10C1"

It doesn't act upon row 1 column 1, it acts upon the targeted cell or range. Column 1 is the same as column A, so R4C1 is the same as A4, R5C2 is B5, and so forth.

The command does not change names, the targeted cell changes. For your R2C3 (also known as C2) example :

Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("C2").FormulaR1C1 = "=your formula here"

Answer 2

Here's some info from my blog on how I like to use formular1c1 outside of vba:

You’ve just finished writing a formula, copied it to the whole spreadsheet, formatted everything and you realize that you forgot to make a reference absolute: every formula needed to reference Cell B2 but now, they all reference different cells.

How are you going to do a Find/Replace on the cells, considering that one has B5, the other C12, the third D25, etc., etc.?

The easy way is to update your Reference Style to R1C1. The R1C1 reference works with relative positioning: R marks the Row, C the Column and the numbers that follow R and C are either relative positions (between [ ]) or absolute positions (no [ ]).

Examples:

• R[2]C refers to the cell two rows below the cell in which the formula’s in
• RC[-1] refers to the cell one column to the left
• R1C1 refers the cell in the first row and first cell ($A$1)

What does it matter? Well, When you wrote your first formula back in the beginning of this post, B2 was the cell 4 rows above the cell you wrote it in, i.e. R[-4]C. When you copy it across and down, while the A1 reference changes, the R1C1 reference doesn’t. Throughout the whole spreadsheet, it’s R[-4]C. If you switch to R1C1 Reference Style, you can replace R[-4]C by R2C2 ($B$2) with a simple Find / Replace and be done in one fell swoop.

Answer 3

I find the most valuable feature of .FormulaR1C1 is sheer speed. Versus eg a couple of very large loops filling some data into a sheet, If you can convert what you are doing into a .FormulaR1C1 form. Then a single operation eg myrange.FormulaR1C1 = "my particular formuala" is blindingly fast (can be a thousand times faster). No looping and counting - just fill the range at high speed.