How do I get the old value of a changed cell in Excel VBA?

Question

I'm detecting changes in the values of certain cells in an Excel spreadsheet like this...

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
Dim cell As Range
Dim old_value As String
Dim new_value As String

For Each cell In Target

    If Not (Intersect(cell, Range("cell_of_interest")) Is Nothing) Then
        new_value = cell.Value
        old_value = ' what here?
        Call DoFoo (old_value, new_value)
    End If

Next cell

End Sub

Assuming this isn't too bad a way of coding this, how do I get the value of the cell before the change?

Answer 1

try this

declare a variable say

Dim oval 

and in the SelectionChange Event

Public Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range) oval = Target.Value End Sub 

and in your Worksheet_Change event set

old_value = oval 

Answer 2

You can use an event on the cell change to fire a macro that does the following:

vNew = Range("cellChanged").value Application.EnableEvents = False Application.Undo vOld = Range("cellChanged").value Range("cellChanged").value = vNew Application.EnableEvents = True  

Answer 3

I had to do it too. I found the solution from "Chris R" really good, but thought it could be more compatible in not adding any references. Chris, you talked about using Collection. So here is another solution using Collection. And it's not that slow, in my case. Also, with this solution, in adding the event "_SelectionChange", it's always working (no need of workbook_open).

Dim OldValues As New Collection

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    'Copy old values
    Set OldValues = Nothing
    Dim c As Range
    For Each c In Target
        OldValues.Add c.Value, c.Address
    Next c
End Sub

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
    On Local Error Resume Next  ' To avoid error if the old value of the cell address you're looking for has not been copied
    Dim c As Range
    For Each c In Target
        Debug.Print "New value of " & c.Address & " is " & c.Value & "; old value was " & OldValues(c.Address)
    Next c
    'Copy old values (in case you made any changes in previous lines of code)
    Set OldValues = Nothing
    For Each c In Target
        OldValues.Add c.Value, c.Address
    Next c
End Sub