MS-Excel / General Formatting

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Count or Sum Cells That Have a Specified Fill Color

Using a bit of code, you can easily SUM or COUNT cells whose fill color was specified manually.

Every nowand then, it's convenient to SUM or COUNT cells that have a specified fill color that you or another user have set manually, as users often understand paint colors more readily than named ranges. To do this, first open the workbook where you want to COUNT or SUM cells by a fill color. Go into the VBE by selecting Alt/Option-F11 and then select Insert → Module to insert a standard module. In this module, type the following code:

Function ColorFunction(rColor As Range, rRange As Range, Optional SUM As Boolean)
Dim rCell As Range
Dim lCol As Long
Dim vResult

lCol = rColor.Interior.ColorIndex

 If SUM = True Then
 For Each rCell In rRange
 If rCell.Interior.ColorIndex = lCol Then
 vResult = WorksheetFunction.SUM(rCell) + vResult
 End If
 Next rCell
 Else
 For Each rCell In rRange
 If rCell.Interior.ColorIndex = lCol Then
 vResult = 1 + vResult
 End If
 Next rCell
End If

ColorFunction = vResult
End Function

Close the window to get back to your worksheet, and save your workbook.

Nowyou can use the custom function ColorFunction in formulas such as this:

=ColorFunction($C$1,$A$1:$A$12,TRUE)

to sum the values in the range of cells $A$1:$A$12 that have the same fill color as cell $C$1. The function will sum in this example because you used TRUE as the last argument for the custom function.

To count the cells that have the same fill color as cell $C$1, you can use this:

=ColorFunction($C$1,$A$1:$A$12,FALSE)

or:

=ColorFunction($C$1,$A$1:$A$12)

By omitting the last argument, the function automatically defaults to using FALSE as the last argument. Nowyou easily can SUM or COUNT cells that have a specified fill color.