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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:

One click to highlight row and column of selected cell in Excel:

Kutools for Excel's Reading Layout utility helps you quickly highlight row and column of selected cell in Excel as the below demo shown.
Download and try it now! (30-day free trail)

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

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Comments (28)
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Luis Lopes
Luis Lopes
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Hello, i built a dashboard with 37 worksheets, everyone with a table. All of them are lock panels because are to large and i need to know the number and name of the student who am i entering data for. Despite that, i have to keep my finger on the left side of the screen to identify the names and numbers to which the entered data refer.  So, i need to identify the first two cells of the row, in the columns "I" and "J".
The code that i took from the internet and couldn't change for the two cells of columns "I" and "J" was:

Dim lTarget As Range

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)

If Target.Row >= 16 Then

If Not lTarget Is Nothing Then

lTarget.EntireRow.Interior.ColorIndex = 0
End If

Target.EntireRow.Interior.Color = 9359529

Set lTarget = Target
End If
End Sub

All tables begin in diferent rows. This example start in 16 row but i put the code in all the pages and adapt to the needs of the specific row number. 
I've already tried to change the code from EntireRow to Range ("I16:J43") but the cells were in the range became all painted with the code color.
Already try a diferent way through the "conditional formatting" with the formula =E($I16<>"";LIN()=CÉL("lin")) in the range $I16:$J43, and in the developer "worksheet", with "Application.Calculate" and it works. I change in the 37 worksheets but i was copying and data from the previous file to this new one and I noticed that the options to paste "values", etc, disappear from my dashboard. The code must be executing something that, like clicking on the cell, no longer lets it paste. A single option was to paste with CTRL+V.
If someone can help me with the code, i'll delete the VBA "Application.Calculate" to to get back to the available collage options.
Thak you for your help.

Luís Lopes
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Rens Borburgh
Rens Borburgh
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Hello, the code used to work for a while, but now it doesn't anymore. What can there be wrong?
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crystal
crystal     Rens Borburgh
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Hi Rens Borburgh,There are two codes provided in the post, which one did you use? Did you get any error prompt?
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Rens Borburgh
Rens Borburgh     crystal
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I have tried them both at the same time. After copying it to a usb stick it didn't work anymore.
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crystal
crystal     Rens Borburgh
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Hi Rens Borburgh,I don't quite understand what you mean. The codes should be used in the sheet code window and not in the Module window. Or can you provide a screenshot of your code window?
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Russ
Russ
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Hi, I am trying to use the double click option to change a cell to green but i also want that cell to go back to no fill or white if i double click it whilst it is green. Is this possible? 
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Claudio Hernandez
Claudio Hernandez
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alguien que me ayude solo quiero que al hacerle click a una celda se ponga de un color y que se mantenga ese color y si le vuelvo hacer click regrese el color original que tenia
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Abdul
Abdul
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How to highlight the cell(with data) to automatically highlight the other cells (data which is related another data in a previous cell) with click of the cell.Can i do it. Is there a way to do it.
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AnnaJ
AnnaJ
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The code works as long as I do not protect the worksheet. Once I protect the worksheet, because I have conditional formatting on locked cells, the code will not work. How can I change this so that it works on locked worksheet where the user can select unlocked cells?
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Vera
Vera
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Hi,
is it possible to have a code for "change cell color when clicking on it" in the way that it will not change already formated cells with another color, please?
After applying your code all my formating (colours) is away. Thank you. Veronika
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kiba fil
kiba fil
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Thank you. Great Job
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shea honig
shea honig
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hi
the is working grate but i want that the color should only be when the cell is selected and when i select something else, the first cell i selcted should not be colored
can you help me pls with this thanks
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Kris
Kris     shea honig
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I had that exact same question! I hope someone will answer you! The reason I am looking for this is I have a spreadsheet I use daily and put in lots of information into single cells. It gets hard to see the values (visually, it runs into info in other cells), and would be a great feature if I could change the color of the cell being edited - only while it is being edited. The simplest solution I can think of is that the cell value would be set back to what it was prior to being clicked on - but I don't know how to do that.
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perry
perry
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Hi, I am trying to figure out how to change the color of a cell, based on a selection from a dropdown list. For example, HIGH=red, MEDIUM=yellow, LOW=green.

Any tips you can provide are greatly appreciated. Thank You
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