"on error goto" glitch. How to deal with a consecutive error and ignoring last row command

Question

I am just learning the abc on vba

I have been working with this code, to auto-populate a list based on 2 others. I have a client list, each client has a consultant, I needed to populate the team each client belonged to, and managed to do this using VLookUp application to relate consultant-manager-team.

So when we have a new consultant on board and has not been added to the "consultant-manager" list, obviously, I get an error. I tried fixing it with "On Error Resume Next", but it just populated the cell with the error using the last valid team name and went on. So I inserted a handler (see code below), for it to leave the cell blank and move on, it works fine when there is one error, but when there were 2 continuous errors:

The macro would leave the first one in blank but populated the second cell with an error using the last valid team name.
It keeps populating even after the list ended, ignoring the condition I gave it for the loop (NumRows in code below).

Could any one of you gods guide me on how to redact the error handling process?

Sub populateteam()
    Dim wbFollowUp As Workbook
    Dim wbList As Workbook
    
    Set wbFollowUp = ThisWorkbook
    Set wbList = Workbooks.Open("C:\<folders>\CSTeams.xlsx")
    
    Dim wsAkasaka As Worksheet
    Dim wsList As Worksheet
    
    Set wsAkasaka = wbFollowUp.Worksheets("Akasaka")
    Set wsList = wbList.Worksheets("All Japan")
    
    wbFollowUp.Activate
    
    Dim consultant As String
    Dim manager As String
    Dim team As String
    
    Dim x As Integer
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    NumRows = Range("b2", Range("b2").End(xlDown)).Rows.Count
    
    For x = 1 To NumRows    
        consultant = wsAkasaka.Range("b" & (ActiveCell.Row)).Value

        On Error GoTo handler:
        manager = Application.VLookup(consultant, wsList.Range("a13:c250"), 3, False)
        team = Application.VLookup(manager, wsList.Range("e2:F11"), 2, False)
        'The name of the manager in the consultant list and in the team list should be exactly the same,
        'including spaces before and after
        
        If IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Value) Then
            ActiveCell.Value = team
            ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
        End If
    Next

    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
    
handler:
    ActiveCell.Value = ""
    ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
    Resume Next
End Sub

You need an `Exit Sub` before your error handler, or it will run regardless. — braX, May 19 '22 at 05:38
Thanks, I wrote in `Exit Sub` as written below, but the 2 problems keep happening. `Exit Sub handler: ActiveCell.Value = "" ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select Resume Next End Sub` — Sachi Neagari, May 19 '22 at 05:49

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 19 '22 at 07:02

Your error handling is not working as you expect. If you read the documentation of the Resume Statement it says Resume Next does the follwing:

Execution resumes with the statement immediately following the statement that caused the error.

So if an error occured in manager = Application.VLookup(consultant, wsList.Range("a13:c250"), 3, False) because the consultant could not be found. It will resume with the next line which is team = Application.VLookup(manager, wsList.Range("e2:F11"), 2, False) but since manager was not retrieved this runs into the error handler again. And it proceeds again with the *next line which is If IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Value) Then.

So the actual problem is that you use .Select and ActiveCell. You might benefit from reading How to avoid using Select in Excel VBA. Instead of using .Select reference your cells directly (see code below):

Option Explicit

Public populateteam()
    Dim wbFollowUp As Workbook
    Set wbFollowUp = ThisWorkbook
    
    Dim wbList As Workbook
    Set wbList = Workbooks.Open("C:\<folders>\CSTeams.xlsx")
    
    Dim wsAkasaka As Worksheet
    Set wsAkasaka = wbFollowUp.Worksheets("Akasaka")
    
    Dim wsList As Worksheet
    Set wsList = wbList.Worksheets("All Japan")
    
        
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    
    Dim LastRow As Long
    LastRow = wsAkasaka.Range("B2").End(xlDown).Row
    
    Dim iRow As Long
    For iRow = 2 To LastRow ' start in row 2 and run to last row if you want to start from the active cells row use `ActiveCell.Row` instead of 2
        Dim consultant As String
        consultant = wsAkasaka.Cells(iRow, "B").Value

        Dim manager As Variant
        manager = Application.VLookup(consultant, wsList.Range("A13:C250"), 3, False)
        
        If Not IsError(manager) Then
            Dim team As Variant
            team = Application.VLookup(manager, wsList.Range("E2:F11"), 2, False)
            'The name of the manager in the consultant list and in the team list should be exactly the same,
            'including spaces before and after
            
            If Not IsError(team) Then
                With wsAkasaka.Cells(iRow, "B")  'replace "B" with the column letter where you want to write your team!
                    If IsEmpty(.Value) Then
                        .Value = team
                    End If
                End With
            End If
        End If
    Next iRow

    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Note that the "B" in the With statement needs to be adjusted to the column where you want to write the team value!

In the code you see I eliminated ActiveCell and .Select entirely by full cell references like wsAkasaka.Cells(iRow, "B").Value it now uses the index iRow from the loop.

Also I removed the error handling and check if the lookup came up with an result (this is more performant than error handling and easier to accomplish). So the code only proceeds with the following step if the lookup was successful. If an error occured it proceeds automatically with the next row Next iRow.

Just a side note. Excel has more rows than Integer can handle. Therefore row counting variables need to be declared Long. Since there is no benefit in using Integer in VBA I recommend always to use Long instead.

Thank you so much! This code looks so much refined. Though I have to admit I had to read the code and your explanation like 4 times to actually understand it. (I feel like I am trying to keep and accounting book when all I can do is count to 10). — Sachi Neagari, May 19 '22 at 08:04

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 19 '22 at 07:11

If you step through your code line-by-line you can find these issues yourself. In fact, whenever error handling isn't working as you expect it to, you should step through your code line-by-line to see exactly what is happening.

For your first issue,

The macro would leave the first one in blank but populated the second cell with an error using the last valid team name.

Think about what's happening as your code runs when you have a new consultant:

The line manager = Application.VLookup(consultant, wsList.Range("a13:c250"), 3, False) will throw an error. Note that the value of manager will NOT update, and will therefore stay as the value it was previously.
Your code goes through the handler block, populate the cell with "", move to the next cell down, and then that Resume Next line takes you directly to team = Application.VLookup(manager, wsList.Range("e2:F11"), 2, False)
Now, the value of manager is the same as it was in the last run, so the value of team will be the same as it was last run.

I'm a little confused by your If IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Value) Then loop, so this advice might not be what you're trying to accomplish, but I recommend adding an Else clause to your If statement, and then moving the line team = Application.VLookup(manager, wsList.Range("e2:F11"), 2, False) under that Else clause. This will only write the team to a cell when the manager value value was updated with an existing consultant.

As for your second issue,

It keeps populating even after the list ended, ignoring the condition I gave it for the loop (NumRows in code below).

have you checked the value of NumRows? This line Range("b2", Range("b2").End(xlDown)).Rows.Count has a value much larger than you think it should be: over 1 million

Thank you @TehDrunkSailor. I chose to use PeH's solution because it seems fool proof, but your analysis really helped me understand where I was going wrong, at what made the code so confusing. — Sachi Neagari, May 19 '22 at 08:09

"on error goto" glitch. How to deal with a consecutive error and ignoring last row command

2 Answers2