Getting Excel Cell Properties in Bulk

Question

When fetching values from a range in Excel, it is much more efficient to get the values in "bulk" (as a 2D array) than looping through each row and column. For ex

Answer 1

I don't think you can get those properties as an array because of how Excel stores that information. Excel does not store formatting for each cell individually but rather stores a particular blend of formats along with an internal "list" of the ranges that use that format.

You can get a sense of how the formatting is stored by creating a small test file with various formats and saving it as XML format (in 2010 at least, you need to use "XML Spreadsheet 2003").

This article may also help.

Answer 2

"I want to find which cells are colored a certain way"

in VBA you can run a quick routine using the Find method that searches by format. For example to find all cells with the same cell font colour and interior colour as the cell in A1. I presume you can use something similar in VSTO

Sub FindFormat()
    Dim rng1 As Range
    Dim rng2 As Range
    Dim strAddress As String
    With Application.FindFormat
        .Interior.ColorIndex = [a1].Interior.ColorIndex
        .Font.Color = [a1].Font.Color
    End With
    Set rng1 = Cells.Find("", [a1], xlFormulas, , , , , , True)
    If Not rng1 Is Nothing Then
        strAddress = rng1.Address
        Set rng2 = rng1
        Do
            Set rng1 = Cells.Find("", rng1, xlFormulas, , , , , , True)
            Set rng2 = Union(rng1, rng2)
        Loop While rng1.Address <> strAddress
        MsgBox "Range similar format to A1 is " & rng2.Address
    End If
End Sub