Insert text into the background of a cell

Question

I am looking for a way to insert text into the background of a cell, so that I can still enter numbers on top of that text - similar to a watermark except for an individual

Answer 1

You can use a custom number format (select the cell(s), hit Ctrl+1, number formats, custom) to specify a light-grey text to display when the cell value is 0 - Color15 makes a nice watermark color:

[Black]000000;;[Color15]"(order number)";@

No messy shapes, no VBA, and the watermark disappears when the value is actually filled up.

And if you absolutely need to do it in VBA, then you can easily write a function that builds the format string based on some parameters:

Public Function BuildWatermarkFormat(ByVal watermarkText As String, Optional ByVal positiveFormat As String = "General", Optional ByVal negativeFormat As String = "General", Optional ByVal textFormat As String = "General") As String
    BuildWatermarkFormat = positiveFormat & ";" & negativeFormat & ";[Color15]" & Chr(34) & watermarkText & Chr(34) & ";" & textFormat
End Function

And then you can do:

myCell.NumberFormat = BuildWatermarkFormat("Please enter a value")
myCell.Value = 0

And you can still supply custom formats for positive/negative values as per your needs; the only thing is that 0 is reserved for "no value" and triggers the watermark.

myCell.NumberFormat = BuildWatermarkFormat("Please enter a value", "[Blue]#,##0.00_)", "[Red](#,##0.00)")
myCell.Value = -25