Transposing an Array in VBA

In this post I will explain you a quick way to transpose an array. Sometimes we need to transpose our arrays before put it to worksheet. You can easily use below method for those situations.

So let's consider the below sample data for this example.

I have this data in Sheet10 of my Excel workbook.
So let's declare our variables and set the worksheet first.

Dim WS As Worksheet Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet10") Dim All_Data() As Variant

Now we can put above data to declared array.

All_Data = WS.Range("A1", "J4")

So we have put all the data to All_Data array.
Next we need to add new worksheet to put our transposed array.

Worksheets.Add

Then you can transpose the array and put it to new worksheet as follows.

ActiveSheet.Range("A1", Range("A1").Offset(UBound(All_Data, 2) - 1, 3)).Value = Application.Transpose(All_Data)

So below is the full code to transpose an array.

Dim WS As Worksheet Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet10") Dim All_Data() As Variant All_Data = WS.Range("A1", "J4") Worksheets.Add ActiveSheet.Range("A1", Range("A1").Offset(UBound(All_Data, 2) - 1, 3)).Value = Application.Transpose(All_Data)

And you will get below result after running the macro.

Re-size Dynamic Arrays

Sometimes when we create dynamic arrays, we know how many elements our array will have. If we know that we can specify the upper bounds of the arrays in the Redim statement. But there are times we can't tell exactly how many elements our array will have. Because we might need to add new elements to our array when go through the subroutine. I will explain this using below example.

Consider this sample data.

Think we need to add records of each person to an array if that person get  more than $7000 of monthly income. So we don't know how many people will be added to our array when we defining it.
Because items will be added to the array when go through the subroutine. So inside a for each loop,  it will check the monthly income of each person and if it is more than $7000, records of that person will be added to the array. So below is the full code to do that.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim Rng As Range Dim PeopleWithHigherIncome() As Variant Dim HigherIncomeCounter As Long Dim LoopCounter As Integer Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") 'find last row Lastrow = WS.Cells.Find("*", [A1], , , xlByRows, xlPrevious).Row HigherIncomeCounter = 0 For Each Rng In WS.Range("A2", "A" & Lastrow)     If Rng.Offset(0, 3).Value > 7000 Then             HigherIncomeCounter = HigherIncomeCounter + 1                 ReDim Preserve PeopleWithHigherIncome(1 To 4, 1 To HigherIncomeCounter)                 For LoopCounter = 1 To 4             PeopleWithHigherIncome(LoopCounter, HigherIncomeCounter) = Rng.Offset(0,                        LoopCounter - 1).Value         Next LoopCounter             End If     Next Rng 'Put PeopleWithHigherIncome array to new worksheet Worksheets.Add ActiveSheet.Range("A1", Range("A1").Offset(3, UBound(PeopleWithHigherIncome, 2) - 1)).Value = PeopleWithHigherIncome

Last two lines of above code will add new sheet and display the result array in that new worksheet.

Here is the final result you will get.

As you can see the values are transposed from our original data. In a next post I will explain how to transpose an array. So we can transpose this result array before put it to a worksheet.

Also there are few things you need to remember.

You can't use below line instead of ReDim Preserve PeopleWithHigherIncome(1 To 4, 1 To HigherIncomeCounter)

ReDim PeopleWithHigherIncome(1 To 4, 1 To HigherIncomeCounter)

Because if you use only ReDim keyword, it will delete earlier added items to the array. But ReDim Preserve keyword will add new items to the array without deleting existing items.

Also you can't write

ReDim Preserve PeopleWithHigherIncome(1 To HigherIncomeCounter, 1 To 4)

Instead of

ReDim Preserve PeopleWithHigherIncome(1 To 4, 1 To HigherIncomeCounter)

If you add Preserve keyword, it can only Re-dimension the last dimension of the array.

Calculate With Arrays

Sometimes we need to do calculations based on the data in our excel sheets and put the results back to the sheets. We can do these calculations for each cell one by one using a for next loop. But it can be inefficient in the running stage of the program. It won't be an issue if we only deal with sheets only have data in few rows. But in real world, we have to deal with sheets which have thousands of rows of data.

So in this post I will explain you how to calculate efficiently using arrays.

Here is the example we have.

It is a sample data set of employees of a company. Column D has their monthly income and column E has the tax rate. According to the above data, tax rate equals to 10%. Normally tax rate increases with the salary level. But to make this example simple, I have set it to 10% for any salary level. So now what we need to do is calculate Annual income, Tax and Remaining.

So let's start the coding.

First we need to declare variables.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim MonthlyIncome() As Variant Dim Answers() As Variant Dim D1 As Long Dim i As Long

We are going use two variant type arrays for this example. Next we need to set the worksheet to declared variable.

Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1")

Below line will add existing data to MonthlyIncome  array.

MonthlyIncome = WS.Range("D2:D19")

We are going to store calculated results in a different array call Answers. For that, we need to determine it's dimensions. Following line will assign it's first dimension to the variable D1.

D1 = UBound(MonthlyIncome, 1)

As we need to store three different result for each employee, second dimension should equal to 3. So we can Redim the Answers array as follows.

ReDim Answers(1 To D1, 1 To 3)

Then below, for next loop will calculate the results for each employee and store the results in Answers array.

For i = 1 To D1     Answers(i, 1) = MonthlyIncome(i, 1) * 12     Answers(i, 2) = (MonthlyIncome(i, 1) * 12 * 10) / 100     Answers(i, 3) = Answers(i, 1) - Answers(i, 2) Next i

Then we can write Answers array to worksheet.

WS.Range(Range("F2"), Range("F2").Offset(D1 - 1, 2)).Value = Answers

Finally it is good practice to erase the arrays

Erase MonthlyIncome Erase Answers

So that is the step by step explanation about how to use arrays for calculations. Below is the full code for above example.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim MonthlyIncome() As Variant Dim Answers() As Variant Dim D1 As Long Dim i As Long Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") MonthlyIncome = WS.Range("D2:D19") D1 = UBound(MonthlyIncome, 1) ReDim Answers(1 To D1, 1 To 3) For i = 1 To D1     Answers(i, 1) = MonthlyIncome(i, 1) * 12     Answers(i, 2) = (MonthlyIncome(i, 1) * 12 * 10) / 100     Answers(i, 3) = Answers(i, 1) - Answers(i, 2) Next i WS.Range(Range("F2"), Range("F2").Offset(D1 - 1, 2)).Value = Answers Erase MonthlyIncome Erase Answers

Following is the result you will get after running the code.

Quickly Write Multidimensional Array to Excel Range

I explained how to write multidimensional array to an Excel range using for next loop from earlier post. But there is much quicker way to do that without for loop.

So lets put below data to a multidimensional array call "PopulationDensity" and then write it back to a new sheet using this quick method.

So here is the code to do that.

Dim WS As Worksheet Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet4") Dim PopulationDensity() As Variant PopulationDensity = WS.Range("A2:D16") Dim WS_New As Worksheet Set WS_New = Worksheets.Add WS_New.Range(Range("A1"), Range("A1").Offset(UBound(PopulationDensity, 1) - 1, _ UBound(PopulationDensity, 2) - 1)).Value = PopulationDensity Erase PopulationDensity

And this is the result you will get.

Index of this array starts from 1. If index of your array start from 0 then you need to change below line

WS_New.Range(Range("A1"), Range("A1").Offset(UBound(PopulationDensity, 1) - 1, _ UBound(PopulationDensity, 2) - 1)).Value = PopulationDensity

as follows

WS_New.Range(Range("A1"), Range("A1").Offset(UBound(PopulationDensity, 1) , _ UBound(PopulationDensity, 2) )).Value = PopulationDensity

Quick Multidimensional Array from Excel Range

There is a quicker way to create multidimensional array from an Excel range.

Assume we need to store below data in an array.

Then here is the quickest way to do that

Sub Quick_MultidimensionalArrays() Dim WS As Worksheet Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") Dim All_Data() As Variant All_Data = WS.Range("A2", "E19") Erase All_Data End Sub

However there is a very important thing you need to remember if you create array in this way. It is that if you create an array in this way, index of array will start from 1 and not from 0.

Also you can replace

All_Data = WS.Range("A2", "E19")

with below

All_Data = WS.Range("A2:E19")

Dynamic arrays in VBA

In an earlier post, I explained about fixed size arrays. We can use fixed size arrays when we know the exact amount of records our database has. But there are instances where we are not certain about the amount of data user will input. For an example think about a database of a company employees. New employees will be recruited and some employees will resigned or retired. So the number of records in this database is not a constant. So we need to use dynamic array to store these data. In this post I will explain how to use dynamic arrays in VBA.

Above is a sample database which contains some information of employees of a company. So we can't tell the exact number of records we will have in this database. Because new records will be added to database and some records will be removed. Also there is a possibility of adding new columns in future to hold some other information. So we need to use dynamic array if we need to store this data.
Below example shows how to store above data in dynamic array and then how to transfer whole data to another sheet.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim All_Data() As Variant Dim i, j As Long Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") 'Find upper bounds Dimension1_Upperbound = WS.Cells.Find("*", [A1], , , xlByRows, xlPrevious).Row - 2 Dimension2_Upperbound = WS.Cells.Find("*", [A1], , , xlByColumns, xlPrevious).Column - 1 ReDim All_Data(0 To Dimension1_Upperbound, 0 To Dimension2_Upperbound) For i = LBound(All_Data, 1) To UBound(All_Data, 1)     For j = LBound(All_Data, 2) To UBound(All_Data, 2)         All_Data(i, j) = WS.Range("A2").Offset(i, j).Value     Next j Next i Dim WS_New As Worksheet Set WS_New = Worksheets("Sheet3") For i = LBound(All_Data, 1) To UBound(All_Data, 1)     For j = LBound(All_Data, 2) To UBound(All_Data, 2)         WS_New.Range("A1").Offset(i, j).Value = All_Data(i, j)     Next j Next i

We declare fixed size arrays like 

Dim All_Data(0 To 17, 0 To 2) As Variant

But we don't use constants when declaring Dynamic arrays. We just declare it as follows.

Dim All_Data() As Variant

After that we use ReDim statement to assign the upper bound and lower bound.

ReDim All_Data(0 To Dimension1_Upperbound, 0 To Dimension2_Upperbound)

But we should find Dimension1_Upperbound and Dimension2_Upperbound prior to ReDim statement as we did in above example. So this is how to use dynamic arrays in VBA.

Multidimensional Arrays in VBA

        If an array has more than one dimension it is called multidimensional array. If you have a list of names which you want to put to an array, you can put them in an array which has single dimension. But think you need to store these names with address and age of each person separately, then the best way is to use an array with two dimensions. Two dimensional arrays are like tables, where rows of tables correspond to first dimension and columns corresponds to second dimension. But if an array has more than two dimensions, following is the best way to illustrate it's structure.

Consider this four dimensional array

Dim SampleArray(0 To 1, 0 To 3, 0 To 2, 0 To 5) As Variant

It's structure can be best explained as follows.

So now let's look at how we can declare and populate multidimensional array. I will use below sample data for the explanations.

So let's put all these data to an array called All_Data()

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim All_Data(0 To 17, 0 To 4) As Variant Dim i, j As Long Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") For i = 0 To 17     For j = 0 To 4         All_Data(i, j) = WS.Range("A2").Offset(i, j).Value     Next j Next i

It is a best practice to use LBound and UBound instead of constants. Because then we don't need to change whole code if we need to change the size of our array. So here is the modification of above code where constants are replaced with LBound and UBound functions.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim All_Data(0 To 17, 0 To 4) As Variant Dim i, j As Long Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") For i = LBound(All_Data, 1) To UBound(All_Data, 1)     For j = LBound(All_Data, 2) To UBound(All_Data, 2)         All_Data(i, j) = WS.Range("A2").Offset(i, j).Value     Next j Next i

So now you know how to put values from worksheet to a multidimensional array. So what if you need to do the reversal. ie-What if you need to put values from an array to a worksheet range. Code is very much similar to the above example. You just need to do a change in one line. Following is an example. Here what we do is, first we get data from first 3 columns to an array. Then reads values from array and put them back to sheet 3.

Dim WS As Worksheet Dim All_Data(0 To 17, 0 To 2) As Variant Dim i, j As Long Set WS = Worksheets("Sheet1") For i = LBound(All_Data, 1) To UBound(All_Data, 1)     For j = LBound(All_Data, 2) To UBound(All_Data, 2)         All_Data(i, j) = WS.Range("A2").Offset(i, j).Value     Next j Next i Dim WS_New As Worksheet Set WS_New = Worksheets("Sheet3") For i = LBound(All_Data, 1) To UBound(All_Data, 1)     For j = LBound(All_Data, 2) To UBound(All_Data, 2)         WS_New.Range("A1").Offset(i, j).Value = All_Data(i, j)     Next j Next i

Here is the result you will get.