In VBA get rid of the case sensitivity when comparing words?

Question

I am working on an VBA program which would allow the user to type an address and find the location by matching elements of the address with a database.

Unfortunately, I am having a recurrent problem with the case sensitivity.

For example, when I am using this code :

For i = 11 To lRowB
Range("B" & i).Activate
myResult = IsNumeric(Application.Match(ActiveCell.Value, manilaListRange, 0))

It is gonna compare the value of the active cell to a list of words from my database. Problem is, if in my active cell the word is "miami" or "MIAMI" and only "Miami" is in the database, it won't work...

Other example:

If Range("J6").Value = "tawi" Then
Range("J6").Value = "Tawi-Tawi"
End If

Same problem, only the word written with the same case is gonna work.

How can I get rid of this? It's particularly annoying and I can't rewrite my database in every case combination possible!

Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

There is a statement you can issue at the module level:

Option Compare Text

This makes all "text comparisons" case insensitive. This means the following code will show the message "this is true":

Option Compare Text

Sub testCase()
  If "UPPERcase" = "upperCASE" Then
    MsgBox "this is true: option Compare Text has been set!"
  End If
End Sub

See for example http://www.ozgrid.com/VBA/vba-case-sensitive.htm . I'm not sure it will completely solve the problem for all instances (such as the Application.Match function) but it will take care of all the if a=b statements. As for Application.Match - you may want to convert the arguments to either upper case or lower case using the LCase function.

Answer 2

You can convert both the values to lower case and compare.

Here is an example:

If LCase(Range("J6").Value) = LCase("Tawi") Then
   Range("J6").Value = "Tawi-Tawi"
End If

Answer 3

If the list to compare against is large, (ie the manilaListRange range in the example above), it is a smart move to use the match function. It avoids the use of a loop which could slow down the procedure. If you can ensure that the manilaListRange is all upper or lower case then this seems to be the best option to me. It is quick to apply 'UCase' or 'LCase' as you do your match.

If you did not have control over the ManilaListRange then you might have to resort to looping through this range in which case there are many ways to compare 'search', 'Instr', 'replace' etc.

Answer 4

It is a bit of hack but will do the task.

Function equalsIgnoreCase(str1 As String, str2 As String) As Boolean
    equalsIgnoreCase = LCase(str1) = LCase(str2)
End Function