VBA Select Case: An Alternative of Multiple If Else If Statements

When you have many conditions to check or you want to do some operation on the basis of the choice of the user, then you may use If Else If statements. But they are troublesome when it comes to multiple conditions. In that case, the best solution in Excel VBA is the Select Case method.

What is a Select Case statement in VBA?

The Select Case statements in VBA are useful when you have multiple conditions to check. They are like switch statements in other programming languages. It checks the given variable and executes the matched case.

Syntax of Select Case in Excel VBA

Select Case variable
 case Condition1
    result1
 case Condition2
    Condition2
  ....
 case ConditionN
    resultN
 [case else
    resultElse]

Select Case: Here Select Case is a keyword to start the case check.

Variable: Variable is any variable that you want to check.

Case: from the next line, we start checking the conditions with variables.

You can have as many conditions as you want. We can check any condition with the keyword case. The condition can be a logical statement or a straight value of the Selected Variable. It will always result in true-false value. These all are valid statements:

 Select Case region
'using a straight value
  Case "Central"
    Range("D1").Value = region 
'using a is statement  
Case Is = "Central"
    Range("D1").Value = region
End Select

With is you can put arithmetic logical operators to check if the Case is equal to(=), greater than(>), less than(<), etc.

You can use the comma (",") to do one operation on multiple conditions (like or operator).

Case Is = "West", "North", "South"
    Range("D1").Value = region

You can also use To operator to check among large ranges.

Case 1 to 40
    Grade = "F"
Case 41 to 60
   Grade="C"
Case 61 to 80
   Grade="B"
Case 81 to 100
   Grade="A"

The Case Else statement is optional. You can use it to do something by default if none of the case match. Like showing a message that the choice is invalid or something.

Case Else
  MsgBox "Invalid Option"

Now that we know about the basics of the Select Case, let's have an example.

Example: Create A Grading Function Using VBA Select Case

We need to create a function that checks the supplied value and returns the grades according to below rules:

• If >41, Grade="F"
• If between 41 and 60, Grade="C"
• If between 61 and 80, Grade="B"
• If between 81 and 100, Grade="A"
• else #VALUE! error.

We will use the Select Case as a Switch statement of VBA here. The code for the custom function will be:

Function GRADES(num As Double)
 Select Case num
  Case Is < 41
   GRADES = "F"
  Case 41 To 60
   GRADES = "C"
  Case 61 To 80
   GRADES = "B"
  Case 81 To 100
   GRADES = "A"
  Case Else
   GRADES = "#VALUE!"
End Select
End Function

Now if you use this function on the sheet, it will return the grades easily.

So yeah guys, this is how the Select Case (switch) statement is used in Excel VBA to check multiple conditions. Instead of multiple If Else If statement we use the Select Case statement to switch results. If you have any doubts regarding this article or any other Excel/VBA related articles, ask in the comments section below.

Download the working file below:

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