Is the . in .Range necessary when defined by .Cells?

Question

It is pretty much widely accepted that this is not \'best practise\'.

dim rng as range
with thisworkbook    \'<~~ possibly set an external workbook 
    w         


        

Answer 1

The answer seems to be: only if the code is located in a Worksheet object. I strongly suspect that this is because the Worksheet objects are the only ones that are both extensible and have a Range function. When Range is called from a Worksheet, that object's Range function has scope. When the code is located in ThisWorkbook or a user module or class, the Range function with the closest available scope is the global Range object (assuming of course that there isn't a user defined Range function). That one is tied to the Application, which has to resolve it based on the passed parameters and forward the call to the correct Worksheet.

Answer 2

No, the . is not required where the cell references inside the brackets are qualified, unless the code is in a Worksheet module. That said it is faster to run set rng = .range(.cells(...), .cells(...)) than it is to run set rng = range(.cells(...), .cells(...)) so including the . does some good.

For a Worksheet module, the . is required.

Answer 3

My opinion is slightly different here.

YES it is required. You can't always control where the user may run the code from.

Please consider these few test cases

SCENARIO

Workbook has 2 worksheets. Sheet1 and Sheet2

---

TEST 1 (Running from a module)

Both Code give same result

TEST 2 (Running from a Sheet code area of Sheet1)

Both Code give same result

TEST 3 (Running from a Sheet code area of Sheet2)

'~~> This code fails
set rng = range(.cells(2, 1), .cells(rows.count, 1).end(xlup))

You will get Application Defined or Object defined error

And hence it is always advisable to properly qualify your objects so that the code can run from anywhere