Excel: Change the background color of a cell when another cell is selected in Excel 2003/XP/2000/97

Question: In Excel 2003/XP/2000/97, I'm looking for VBA code that will change the background color of a cell when I click on another cell.

For example, if I click on cell A1, I'd like the background color of cell B2 to change to red.

Answer: To change the background color of a cell A1 when cell B2 is clicked, we need to create a macro that is called when the Worksheet's SelectionChange event is fired.

Download Excel spreadsheet (as demonstrated below)

In the spreadsheet below, we've created a macro that will run each time the user selects a different cell on Sheet1.

If the user selects cell A1, the macro will set the background color of cell B2 to red.

You can view the macro by pressing Alt-F11.

Macro Code:

The macro code looks like this:

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)

    If Not Intersect(Range("A1"), Target) Is Nothing Then
        Range("B1").Interior.ColorIndex = 3
        Range("B1").Interior.Pattern = xlSolid
    End If

End Sub