How to change cell color when cell is clicked or selected in Excel?

This article will show you some methods of how to change cell color while clicking on a cell, and change the highlighted color while selecting a range of cells in Excel.

Change cell color when cell is clicked with VBA code
Change the highlighted color when cells are selected with VBA code
Highlight entire row and column of active cell with Kutools for Excel

Change cell color when cell is clicked with VBA code

Here, you can change the background color of a cell when double clicking it or right clicking on it with the following VBA code.

1. In the worksheet you will change the cell color when clicking on it, right click the sheet tab and click View Code from the right-clicking menu.

2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please copy and paste the below VBA code into the Code window.

VBA: change cell color when clicking on it

Private Sub Worksheet_BeforeDoubleClick(ByVal Target As Range, Cancel As Boolean)
    Target.Interior.Color = vbRed
End Sub
Private Sub Worksheet_BeforeRightClick(ByVal Target As Range, Cancel As Boolean)
    Target.Interior.Color = vbGreen
End Sub

3. Press Alt + Q keys simultaneously to close the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

Then, when you double click a cell, it will be colored in red. And when you right click on a cell, it will be colored in green. See screenshot:

Change the highlighted color when cells are selected with VBA code

By default, when selecting a range of cells, the highlighted color is gray. If you want to make the selected range more standing out, you can change its highlighted color to the one you need. Please do as follows.

1. Right click the sheet tab you want to change the highlighted color of the selected range, and click View Code from the right-clicking menu.

2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please copy and paste the below VBA code into the Code window.

VBA code: change the highlighted color of selected range

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    With Target
        .Worksheet.Cells.FormatConditions.Delete
        .FormatConditions.Add xlExpression, , "TRUE"
        .FormatConditions(1).Interior.Color = vbYellow
    End With
End Sub

3. Press Alt + Q keys at the same time to close the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

From now on, the highlighted color of selected range or cell is changed to yellow. When you click another cell or range of cells, the cells will be colored automatically.

Highlight entire row and column of active cell with Kutools for Excel

If you are dealing with a large worksheet, it is necessary to highlight the entire row and column of the active cell in order to make reading more easily. Here the Reading Layout utility of Kutools for Excel can help you.

Before applying Kutools for Excel, please download and install it firstly.

1. Click Kutools > Reading Layout. See screenshot:

Then the reading layout is enabled, you can see the row and column of active cell are highlighted immediately.

Note: You can change the reading layout settings based on your needs as below screenshot shown.

  If you want to have a free trial ( 30-day) of this utility, please click to download it, and then go to apply the operation according above steps.

Highlight entire row and column of active cell with Kutools for Excel

The Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%

• Reuse: Quickly insert complex formulas, charts and anything that you have used before; Encrypt Cells with password; Create Mailing List and send emails...
• Super Formula Bar (easily edit multiple lines of text and formula); Reading Layout (easily read and edit large numbers of cells); Paste to Filtered Range...
• Merge Cells/Rows/Columns without losing Data; Split Cells Content; Combine Duplicate Rows/Columns... Prevent Duplicate Cells; Compare Ranges...
• Select Duplicate or Unique Rows; Select Blank Rows (all cells are empty); Super Find and Fuzzy Find in Many Workbooks; Random Select...
• Exact Copy Multiple Cells without changing formula reference; Auto Create References to Multiple Sheets; Insert Bullets, Check Boxes and more...
• Extract Text, Add Text, Remove by Position, Remove Space; Create and Print Paging Subtotals; Convert Between Cells Content and Comments...
• Super Filter (save and apply filter schemes to other sheets); Advanced Sort by month/week/day, frequency and more; Special Filter by bold, italic...
• Combine Workbooks and WorkSheets; Merge Tables based on key columns; Split Data into Multiple Sheets; Batch Convert xls, xlsx and PDF...
• More than 300 powerful features. Supports Office/Excel 2007-2019 and 365. Supports all languages. Easy deploying in your enterprise or organization. Full features 30-day free trial. 60-day money back guarantee.

Read More... Free Download... Purchase... 

---

Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier

• Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
• Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
• Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!

Read More... Free Download... Purchase...