Return RGB values from Range.Interior.Color (or any other Color Property)

Question

I was trying to incrementally change the background color of a cell to black, and I found that the Range.Interior.Color method returns a Long which is seemingly arbitrary. Looking at the documentation on MSDN, there is nearly nothing about what this number represents. Is there a way to return the RGB value from this long. I effectively need the opposite of the RGB(red, green, blue) function.

Answer 1

That "arbitrary" number is a mathematical combination of the RGB values (B*256^2 + G*256 + R) and a conversion of the hex color value to a decimal number (base 16 to base 10), depending on which way you want to look at it. Just different bases. Below is the method I use in the XLAM addin file I wrote for Excel. This method has come in handy many times. I have included the documentation in my addin file.

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'   Function            Color
'   Purpose             Determine the Background Color Of a Cell
'   @Param rng          Range to Determine Background Color of
'   @Param formatType   Default Value = 0
'                       0   Integer
'                       1   Hex
'                       2   RGB
'                       3   Excel Color Index
'   Usage               Color(A1)      -->   9507341
'                       Color(A1, 0)   -->   9507341
'                       Color(A1, 1)   -->   91120D
'                       Color(A1, 2)   -->   13, 18, 145
'                       Color(A1, 3)   -->   6
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Function Color(rng As Range, Optional formatType As Integer = 0)     As Variant
    Dim colorVal As Variant
    colorVal = Cells(rng.Row, rng.Column).Interior.Color
    Select Case formatType
        Case 1
            Color = Hex(colorVal)
        Case 2
            Color = (colorVal Mod 256) & ", " & ((colorVal \ 256) Mod 256) & ", " & (colorVal \ 65536)
        Case 3
            Color = Cells(rng.Row, rng.Column).Interior.ColorIndex
        Case Else
            Color = colorVal
    End Select
End Function