compare formatted date vba

Question

hi have to compare 2 date variables´. One of them is from a general field cell and i store it into a String variable. The other one is taken from a data field and i store it into a Date variable. The procedure i follow is: -i take the first data, the one in the normal field that is in this format "(5-8-2014)" and i work on it in the following procedure:

tempdate1 = Cells(27, "N").Value:
tempdate1 = Replace(tempdate1, "(", ""):
tempdate1 = Replace(tempdate1, ")", ""):
tempdate1 = Format(tempdate1, "DD-MM-YYYY"):

i read all the column A with a for to search the string "TIMESTAMP" and take the related date column next to it.

-Highest date is the maximun date, and at the beginning it takes value from tempdate -countdate is a variable to count the number of date i want (i want to count a date only if the date i found is greater then the local maximun) -if temp>date1 i found a local MAXIMUM, i count the TIMESTAMP and i put date in the array.

 highestDate = tempdate1
countdate = 1 ' because i have already the first date
k = 0
dates(k) = highestDate ' i put in the first position the first data
'Find the highest Date
For i = 1 To lastRow
If Cells(i, 3).Value = "TIMESTAMP" Then
temp = Cells(i, 4).Value:
temp = Format(temp, "MM-DD-YYYY"):
date1 = CDate(highestDate):
    If temp > date1 Then: date1 = temp: countdate = countdate + 1: highestDate = date1:
dates(k) = highestDate: k = k + 1
End If
Next i

Problem is that the procedure is not getting inside the if and i have no elements on the array even if in the excel sheet i have several dates greater than the first one that i found. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

While VBA allows the colon, continuation character, it is generally not recommened. Example, debugging is difficult when using the colons as you can't set breakpoints.

Please set a breakpoint on

   dates(k) = highestDate

When you debug, you'll see it's how you're setting the bounds of the array:

dim dates(0)
highestDate = tempdate1
countdate = 1 ' because i have already the first date
k = 0
dates(k) = highestDate ' i put in the first position the first data
'Find the highest Date
For i = 1 To lastRow
If Cells(i, 3).Value = "TIMESTAMP" Then
temp = Cells(i, 4).Value:
temp = Format(temp, "MM-DD-YYYY"):
date1 = CDate(highestDate):
    If temp > date1 Then: date1 = temp: countdate = countdate + 1: highestDate = date1:
        dates(k) = highestDate 
        k = k + 1
        REDIM PRESERVE dates(k) 'make room in the array!
    End If
Next i