How to highlight specific text within a cell based on other text?

In Excel, it may be easy for us to highlight the cells based on a specific text, but, here, I want to highlight a specific text within a cell to make it outstanding but not the entire cell. This maybe a troublesome for most of us. This article, I will talk about some tricks for solving this job in Excel.

Highlight a specific text within multiple cells with VBA code

Highlight specific text within a cell based on other text with VBA code

Highlight a specific text within multiple cells with VBA code

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For example, I have a range of text strings, and now, I want to highlight the specific text “Sky” in these cells to get the result as following screenshot shown:

To highlight only part of text within a cell, the following VBA code can help you.

1. Select the cells which you want to highlight the specific text, and then hold down the ALT + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the following code in the Module Window.

VBA code: Highlight a part of text within a cell:

Sub HighlightStrings()
'Updateby Extendoffice 20160704
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim Rng As Range
Dim cFnd As String
Dim xTmp As String
Dim x As Long
Dim m As Long
Dim y As Long
cFnd = InputBox("Enter the text string to highlight")
y = Len(cFnd)
For Each Rng In Selection
  With Rng
    m = UBound(Split(Rng.Value, cFnd))
    If m > 0 Then
      xTmp = ""
      For x = 0 To m - 1
        xTmp = xTmp & Split(Rng.Value, cFnd)(x)
        .Characters(Start:=Len(xTmp) + 1, Length:=y).Font.ColorIndex = 3
        xTmp = xTmp & cFnd
      Next
    End If
  End With
Next Rng
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

3. Then press F5 key to run this code, and a prompt box will pop out to remind you enter the text that you want to highlight only, see screenshot:

4. And then click OK button, all the text you specified has been highlighted only within the cells, see screenshot:

Highlight specific text within a cell based on other text with VBA code

Here is another situation, I have two columns which the first column contains the text strings and the second column is the specific text, now, I need to highlight the relative text in the first column based on the specific text in the second column.

1. Hold down the ALT + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the following code in the Module Window.

VBA code: Highlight a part of text within a cell based on other text:

Sub highlight()
'Updateby Extendoffice 20160704
    Dim xStr As String
    Dim xRg As Range
    Dim xTxt As String
    Dim xCell As Range
    Dim xChar As String
    Dim I As Long
    Dim J As Long
    On Error Resume Next
    If ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.Count > 1 Then
      xTxt = ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.AddressLocal
    Else
      xTxt = ActiveSheet.UsedRange.AddressLocal
    End If
LInput:
    Set xRg = Application.InputBox("please select the data range:", "Kutools for Excel", xTxt, , , , , 8)
    If xRg Is Nothing Then Exit Sub
    If xRg.Areas.Count > 1 Then
        MsgBox "not support multiple columns"
        GoTo LInput
    End If
    If xRg.Columns.Count <> 2 Then
        MsgBox "the selected range can only contain two columns "
        GoTo LInput
    End If
    For I = 0 To xRg.Rows.Count - 1
        xStr = xRg.Range("B1").Offset(I, 0).Value
        With xRg.Range("A1").Offset(I, 0)
            .Font.ColorIndex = 1
            For J = 1 To Len(.Text)
                If Mid(.Text, J, Len(xStr)) = xStr Then .Characters(J, Len(xStr)).Font.ColorIndex = 3
            Next
        End With
    Next I
End Sub

3. After pasting the code, and press F5 key to run it, a prompt box will pop out to remind you select the data range which both contains the text string and specific text you want to highlight and based on, see screenshot:

4. And then click OK button, all the corresponding text in the first column based on the specific text in the second column has been colored red as following screenshot:

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