Excel VBA InStr Function – Explained with

Examples
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Yesterday, I got an email from one of my readers – June.

She wanted to know how to apply bold font format to a specific part of a
string within a cell. For example, apply the bold format to only the word
‘Hello’ from ‘Hello World’.

And she wanted to do this for hundreds of cell at once.

Since there is no inbuilt functionality in Excel that can do that, I created a

simple macro that uses the Excel VBA InStr function (you will see how to
do this in Example 4 in this tutorial).

But first, let’s see how the Excel VBA InStr function works!

This Tutorial Covers:

1. Excel VBA InStr Function
1. Excel VBA InStr Function - Introduction
2. Syntax of InStr Function
1. Additional Notes on Excel VBA InStr Function:
2. Example 1 - Finding the Position from the beginning
3. Example 2 - Finding the Position from the beginning of the Second
Word
4. Example 3 - Finding the Position of @ in Email Address
5. Example 4 - Highlighting a Part of String within Cells

Excel VBA InStr Function

In this tutorial, I will explain the usage of InStr function in Excel VBA and
see some practical examples where it can be used.
 Excel VBA InStr Function – Introduction
InStr function finds the position of a specified substring within the string and
returns the first position of its occurrence.

For example, if you want to find the position of ‘x’ in ‘Excel’, using the Excel
VBA InStr function would return 2.

Syntax of InStr Function

InStr( [Start], String1, String2, [Compare] )

 [Start] – (optional argument) this is an integer value that tells the

InStr function the starting position from which it should start looking. For
example, if I want the search to start from the beginning, I will enter the
value as 1. If I want it to begin with the third character onwards, I will use
3. If omitted, the default value of 1 is taken.
 String1 – This is the main string (or the parent string) in which you
want to search. For example, if you’re looking for the position of x in Excel,
String 1 would be “Excel”.
 String2 – This is the substring that you are searching for. For
example, if you’re looking for the position of x in Excel, String2 would be x.
 [Compare] – (optional argument) You can specify one the following
three values for [compare] argument:
o vbBinaryCompare – This would do a character by character
comparison. For example, if you’re looking for ‘x’ in ‘Excel’, it will return 2,
but if you’re looking for ‘X’ in ‘Excel’, it will return 0 as X is in upper case.
You can also use 0 instead of vbBinaryCompare. If the [Compare] argument
is omitted, this is the taken as default.
o vbTextCompare – This would do a textual comparison. For
example, if you look for ‘x’ or ‘X’ in Excel, it would return 2 in both the
cases. This argument ignores the letter case. You can also use 1 instead of
vbTextCompare.
o vbDatabaseCompare –  This is used for Microsoft Access only.
It uses the information in the database to perform the comparison. You can
also use 2 instead of vbDatabaseCompare.
Additional Notes on Excel VBA InStr Function:
 InStr is a VBA function and not a worksheet function. This means that
you can not use it within the worksheet.

 If String2 (which is the substring whose position you’re looking for) is

empty, the function would return the value of the [Start] argument.

 If the InStr function can not find the substring within the main string,
it would return 0.

Now let’s have a look at some example of using the Excel VBA InStr Function

Example 1 – Finding the Position from the

beginning
In this example, I will use the InStr function to find the position of ‘V’ in
‘Excel VBA’ from the beginning.

The code for this would be:

Sub FindFromBeginning()

Dim Position As Integer

Position = InStr(1, "Excel VBA", "V", vbBinaryCompare)

MsgBox Position

End Sub

When you run this code, it will show a message box with the value 7, which
is the position of ‘V’ in the string ‘Excel VBA’.
Example 2 – Finding the Position from the
beginning of the Second Word
Suppose, I want to find the position of ‘the’ in the sentence – ‘The quick
brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’

However, I want the search to begin with the second word onwards.

In this case, we need to change the [Start] argument to make sure it

specifies the position from where the second word starts.

Here is the code that will do this:

Sub FindFromSecondWord()

Dim Position As Integer

Position = InStr(4, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", "the", vbBinaryCompare)

MsgBox Position

End Sub

This code will show the message box with the value 32 as we have specified
the starting position as 4. Hence it ignores the first ‘The’ and finds the
second ‘the’ in the sentence.

If you want to make it more dynamic, you can enhance the code so that it
automatically ignore the first word.

Here is the enhanced code that will do this:

Sub FindFromSecondWord()

Dim StartingPosition As Integer

Dim Position As Integer

StartingPosition = InStr(1, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", " ", vbBinaryCompare)

Position = InStr(StartingPosition, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", "the",
vbBinaryCompare)
MsgBox Position

End Sub

This code first finds the position of a space character and stores it in the
variable StartingPosition.

It then uses this variable as the starting position to look for the word ‘the’.

Hence it returns 32 (which is the starting position of ‘the’ after the first
word).

Example 3 – Finding the Position of @ in

Email Address
You can easily create a custom function to find the position of @ in an email
address using the Excel VBA InStr function.

Here is the code to create the custom function:

Function FindPosition(Ref As Range) As Integer

Dim Position As Integer

Position = InStr(1, Ref, "@")

FindPosition = Position

End Function

Now you can use this custom function as any other worksheet function. It
will take a cell reference as input and give you the position of @ in it.
Similarly, you can create a custom function to find the position of any
substring within the main string.

Example 4 – Highlighting a Part of String

within Cells
This is the query that was asked by June (my reader who also inspired me to
write this tutorial).

Here is a sample data in the format June sent me:

Her query was to make the numbers outside the bracket bold.

Here is the code I created that does this:

Sub Bold()
Dim rCell As Range

Dim Char As Integer

For Each rCell In Selection

CharCount = Len(rCell)

Char = InStr(1, rCell, "(")

rCell.Characters(1, Char - 1).Font.Bold = True

Next rCell

End Sub

The above code uses the For Each loop to go through each of the cells in the
selection. It identifies the position of the opening bracket character using
the InStr function. It then changes the font of the text before the bracket.

To use this code, you need to copy and paste in a module in the VB editor.