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Arrays in Visual Basic for Applications macros

Part four of a five-part series of blogs

You can use arrays (multiple variables) in VBA to speed up code - and they are also invaluable for processing CSV files and the like.

This blog is part of our Excel VBA tutorial. We also run training courses for businesses or individuals in Microsoft Excel and in VBA programming.

Posted by Andy Brown on 24 February 2012

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Multi-dimensional Arrays

I find it very hard to write enthusiastically about multi-dimensional arrays. When I first started my programming career (1986, if you must know), the first system I worked on was written in an old language called Fortran, and made extensive use of multi-dimensional arrays. The resulting code was hard to understand and write.

You can - and should - avoid ever using multi-dimensional arrays, but there will always be people who like to make life hard, and this blog page is written for them!

Avoiding Multi-dimensional Arrays

Let's start with how to avoid them. Suppose that you want to read the names and ages of the people in the spreadsheet shown below into arrays:

You might want to read the names and ages of these people into an array.

The easy way to do this is to create two arrays: one for the names, and another for the ages. Here (without any further explanation) is code which would do just that:

Option Explicit

Sub ListPeople()

'declare two arrays of unknown length

Dim PersonName() As String

Dim PersonAge() As String

'initially there are no people

Dim NumberPeople As Integer

NumberPeople = 0

'loop over all of the people cells

Dim PersonCell As Range

Dim TopCell As Range

Dim PersonRange As Range

Set TopCell = Range("A1")

Set PersonRange = Range(TopCell, _

TopCell.End(xlDown))

For Each PersonCell In PersonRange

'we've found another person!

NumberPeople = NumberPeople + 1

'for each person found, extend both arrays

ReDim Preserve PersonName(NumberPeople-1)

ReDim Preserve PersonAge(NumberPeople-1)

'now store the name and age of the new person

PersonName(NumberPeople-1) = PersonCell.Value

PersonAge(NumberPeople-1) = PersonCell.Offset(0, 1).Value

Next PersonCell

'list out contents to show worked

Dim i As Integer

For i = 1 To NumberPeople

Debug.Print PersonName(i-1), PersonAge(i-1)

Next i

End Sub

If you're wondering what you'd do if you got a 3rd column, the answer is: create a 3rd array. If you created a 4th column, maybe it would be time to think of creating a database application!

Declaring Multi-dimensional Arrays

To create an array in more than one dimension, separate the arguments with commas. For example:

'the following array has 4 x 5 x 6 elements = 120

Dim PointlessArray(3, 4, 5)

Depressingly, you can have up to 32 dimensions. IMHO, two is one too many!

For our example above, you could list out the cell contents as follows:

Option Explicit

Sub ListPeople()

'declare array which will become 2-dimensional

Dim PersonDetails() As String