Retrieve the index of an object stored in a collection using its key (VBA)

Question

I have a collection with several elements in VBA, each of these elements has a key assigned.

I would like to know the position of a given element in the collection u

Answer 1

I recently had the same "issue" and used this workaround:

Create two collections: one containing the actual strings of interest and one containing numbers from 1 to n with the actuals strings as keys. This way you can retrieve the index since it's a value in the second collection.

Sub example()

    'imagine we are reading out following excel column

    'one
    'two
    'three

    Dim textcol, numcol As New Collection
    Dim i, index As Integer
    Dim str As String

    For i = 1 To Range.Rows.Count
        textcol.Add Range.Cells(i, 1)       'value, no key
        numcol.Add i, Range.Cells(i, 1)     'i, value as key
    Next i

    'textcol: "one", "two", "three"
    'numcol: 1 ["one"], 2 ["two"], 3 ["three"]

    str = "two"
    index = numcol(str) '~> 2

End Sub

It's not pretty but it worked for me.