Emulating the search facility on Google

[TheJay]

I have a workbook that searches multiple worksheets and then pastes the matching rows into the first sheet after clicking a button to bring up a search box.

Buttons in Excel are stupidly ugly and it's amazing how many people don't even realise it's a button, things have moved on a lot since the very outdated controls were drawn. It would be much better if I could introduce a much more recognised way of searching instead.

The Google search lost it's search button a LONG time ago. So, can we do the same in Excel and have a search bar on the worksheet instead? When the user enters text and taps enter, it brings back the results just like Google. Even better, having a hover over transition, which produces a shadow. The search term remains in the box at all times.

Search.xlsm

Search ,,,,,,,,,,

docs.google.com

Has anyone tried to implement this?

 

[cmowla]

This is not an official answer (so I hope the mods won't mind), but yes, I actually tried to simulate Google's search engine about 2 years ago. (The search engine itself, not what it searches.)

A lot of weird things happened with the interactions of the user form (the way Microsoft designed how certain triggers trigger each other is mind boggling!) But to answer your question slightly, the way I approached it is have 10 nearly overlapping command buttons so that when you type something, each of them gets a word in the related words list.

[video removed]

I hope to resume the project someday, but it was (as you can see in the video) for being able to search saved content on your personal computer. (Large textbooks, bible-long texts, etc.) And even YouTube video transcripts, etc.

But as far as searching the web part of it, I have no experience with that. I can download data with VBA (like everyone else who simply looks up a function to do that), but not an actual internet search engine.

I hope that gives you (and others) ideas! And hopefully someone can give insight for the web search aspect!

 

[TheJay]

Thanks for your reply, it's essentially the interface and functionality I am interested in, my workbook already searches the relevant sheets in my workbook.

Type the searchword or phrase, hit enter to start the search without clicking a button.

I never needed to search local drives or the internet.

 

[cmowla]

my workbook already searches the relevant sheets in my workbook

That was exactly the case for me too, and I wanted to have the functionality. But just for clarity of future viewers, is what I show in the (unlisted) video along the lines as what you want? If not, the more details you give, the more likely you will get a reply.