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How to auto select text of a textbox when it is selected in Excel?

Author Siluvia Last modified

For deleting texts in a textbox (ActiveX Control), firstly, you need to select all texts inside the textbox. This article is talking about automatically selecting all texts of a textbox when clicking the textbox in Excel.

Auto select text of a textbox when it is selected with VBA code

Auto select text of a textbox when it is selected with VBA code

Please apply the below VBA code to automatically select all texts of a textbox when selecting the textbox in Excel.

1. For a worksheet contains the textbox you will make its texts auto selected, please turn on the Design Mode by clicking Developer > Design Mode. See screenshot:

click Developer > Design Mode

Or you can also insert a textbox by clicking Developer > Insert > Text Box (ActiveX Control). See screenshot:

click Developer > Insert > Text Box

2. Right-click the textbox and click View Code from the context menu. See screenshot:

Right-click the textbox and click View Code

3. In the opening Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, please replace the original VBA code in the Code window with below VBA code.

VBA code: Automatically select texts of a textbox when clicking on it

Private Sub TextBox1_MouseDown(ByVal Button As Integer, ByVal Shift As Integer, _
ByVal X As Single, ByVal Y As Single)
    Call SelTextBox(Me.TextBox1.Object)
End Sub

Sub SelTextBox(xTextBox As Object)
    With xTextBox
        .SelStart = 0
        .SelLength = Len(.Text)
    End With
End Sub

Notes:

1. In the code, TextBox1 is the name of the textbox you will clear contents from. Please change it to your own.

2. For automatically selecting texts of multiple textboxes when clicking on them, please add below VBA code between the two sections in above code. And change the TextBox2 to the name of your needed textbox.

Private Sub TextBox2_MouseDown(ByVal Button As Integer, ByVal Shift As Integer, ByVal X As Single, ByVal Y As Single)
    Call SelTextBox(Me.TextBox2.Object)
End Sub

4. Press the Alt + Q keys to exit the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

5. Turn off the Design Mode.

From now on, when clicking on the textbox, all texts inside the textbox will be selected automatically.

when clicking on the textbox, all texts inside the textbox will be selected

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