Customizable trivia game for family game night, workplace teambuilding

and more

Non-VBA
Cell References
Let’s start with the non-VBA part of the workbook. The players’ names or team names are entered into
Row 1. Each wedge charts’ title is a reference to the player’s name. For Chart 1, the title is
=Trivia!$B$1:$C$1 which by default is “Team 1”.

Beginning with the player’s scores in rows 2-7, for each topic column, there is simply a reference to the
Legend in column “V”. When the legend Topics are changed, the player’s topic are also changed. The
worksheets (tabs) at the bottom are changed with VBA documented later.

Conditional Formatting
Row 1 contains the player’s names. The coloring of this row uses conditional formatting to display the
cell depending on the number of players, current player and winner. If all the answer column for that
player is non-empty, it turns red. If the player is the current player, it turns green. The current player is
stored on a hidden worksheet called “Hidden.” And if there are fewer players that the current column,
it makes the cells invisible by changing the font to white. Otherwise, the font it black. Here is the
conditional formatting for Team 3, cells F1:G1.

For each answer there is a conditional formatting where any character put in that cell changes color.
For the game, a SPACE is put there because it is invisible. But any character will do. You may notice that
the pie charts do not update automatically. It takes VBA to update the charts and that VBA will run if
you hit the “Update Board” button.

Hidden Items
There are three areas where information is hidden from the players and moderator. First, there is a
hidden worksheet called “Hidden.” It contains variables that are used to track the gameplay. There is a
cell on Hidden that contains the current player number. Another holds the topic the player chose.
There is also a count of the number of questions for each topic. This is used by the random number
generator as the maximum value.
Finally, there is data used by the wedges in the pie chart. There are six “1” values in that column to
make 6 wedges. Excel does not have a way to fill in individual wedges of a pie chart, so this data allows
us to build our own pie charts.

You will notice column A is hidden. This was left over from a previous iteration of the game and are not
used anymore. It was more work than it was worth to move the game to start in column A.

Finally, Column C on each Topic worksheet is also hidden. This contains a flag if the question was used
before so that questions are not repeated.

Wedge Charts
The charts that create the wedges are 2D pie charts graphing the 6 number 1’s as the series from the
Hidden worksheet. This makes 6 even sized wedges. The fill is turned off, the borders are solid line and
the legend is removed. The fill of the each wedge is controlled by VBA.

Each chart is provided a name such as ‘Chart 1’ and ‘Chart 2’. This is so we can refer to each chart
programmatically in VBA using “Chart “ & chartnum.
Data Validations
Finally, on the Instructions worksheet, the number of players and the timer input have data validations
to ensure the proper values. 2-9 for the number of players on worksheet Instructions in cell B18.

And the number of seconds for a timer, 0-600, on worksheet Instructions in cell B21.
VBA
Module1
Module1 contains 4 global variables used to pass data to and from the Q&A form. These are the
question text, the answer text and if the player got the answer right or wrong.

Global Answer As String

Global Question As String

Global Correct As Boolean

Global Wrong As Boolean

Sheet1 (Trivia)
When any of the six question buttons are pressed, they each call their own TopicxButton_Click() sub.

Private Sub Topic1Button_Click()

QAForm.Caption = Worksheets("Trivia").Range("$V$12") + " Question"

showQuestionBox (topic1)

End Sub

Each topic button sets the caption of the question and answer form and calls the showQuestionBox()
sub with their topic number as the parameter.

showQuestionBox() is the subroutine that controls the gameplay. It is responsible for generating the
random question, showing the Question and Answer form, deciding what to do if the question is
answered correctly, wrong or the timer expires and controlling which players turn it is.
showQuestionBox() generates a random number, goes to the proper topic worksheet and pulls the
question and answer from that random row. Then shows the question and answer form. The form
loads the global Booleans Correct and Wrong with 4 combinations.

' Wrong=True and Correct=True means timer ran out

' Wrong=True and Correct=False means wrong answer was given

' Wrong=False and Correct=True means correct answer was given

' Wrong=False and Correct=False means question was repeated

The repeated question option could be removed since we track which questions have been used and
select a different random number until an unused one is picked. If the player answered correctly, put
something in the box next to their topic and move to the next player. If wrong or time ran out, just
move to the next player.

Once we move to the next player, the showQuestionBox() sub then disables button that the player has
already answered correctly. ThisWorkbook.trivia() updates the screen.

Finally, we monitor the topics in the legend to see if they change. If one of them changes, we update
the button text and the name of the worksheet to match it.

If Target.Address = "$V$12" Then

Worksheets(3).Name = Range("v12").Value
Topic1Button.Caption = Range("v12").Value + " Question"
End If

Sheet2 (Instructions)
We need to keep track of whether the number of players has changed. We watch to see if cell B:18
changes and if so, call NumPlayersChanged()

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)

If Target.Address = "$B$18" Then

Call NumPlayersChanged

End If

End Sub
The NumPlayersChanged() sub hides the charts by looping through the charts and hiding them if not
needed.

ThisWorkbook
This contains 2 subs. Clearall() resets all value to start a new game. It is called when the Clear All button
is pressed. The other sub is trivia() and it manages filling in the wedges and determining the winner.

As mentioned, Excel does not have a built in way to fill in a single wedge of a pie chart. For player1,
their chart is named “Chart 1”. We look at their cells C2 – C7. If that cell is not blank, we fill in that
wedge by changing the color of the Points(wedge num).

For rownumber = 2 To 7

col = (player * 2) + 1

If Cells(rownumber, col) <> "" Then

ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Points(rownumber - 1).Interior.Color = colors(rownumber - 2)

Else

ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Points(rownumber - 1).Interior.Color = white

End If

Next

QAForm Code
This is the form that appears and shows the questions. If the player answers correct, wrong or repeated
question, the form is hidden, values are reset and Correct and Wrong set. It is straight forward except
the timer. If there is a timer value on the Instructions worksheet, we need to call CountdownTimer().
First, it changes the number of seconds to hh:mm:ss format for display in the upper right corner of the
form.

We remember the current time as the TimerStart. If TimerStart plus the length of the time are greater
than now, keep looping.

Loop While ((TimerStart + SecondsToRun > Timer) And (QAForm.Visible))

If the form is still visible, no one pushed the Correct, Wrong or Repeat buttons, the timer must have
expired. If it did, show the correct answer for 5 seconds and then hide the form.

If (QAForm.Visible) Then
AnswerBox.Text = Answer
Correct = True
Wrong = True
CorrectButton.Enabled = False
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:05"))
Hide
End If