Min and Max Functions Do Not Work Properly with Arrays

WORKAROUND

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. Visual Basic for Applications provides the DateSerial function for use with arrays of dates. The Max and Min worksheet functions work properly with DateSerial.

With a Double data type, the first element in an array is 0 by default (unless Option Base 1 is declared).

In the following sample macro, Dim dblarr(2) defines an array of three elements with the first element being referred to as zero. The remaining issue lies in converting an array of dates to an array of strings. The Min and Max functions do not evaluate each element of the array; therefore, they evaluate the strings to zero.

Sample Visual Basic Procedure

   Option Explicit

   Sub DateArrayArithTest()
      Dim dtarr() As Date
      ReDim dtarr(1 To 2)

      Sheets("sheet1").Activate
      dtarr(1) = DateSerial(1997, 3, 12)
      dtarr(2) = DateSerial(1996, 3, 12)

      ActiveSheet.Cells(3, 2).Value = Application.Min(dtarr)
      ActiveSheet.Cells(4, 2).Value = Application.Max(dtarr)
      ActiveSheet.Cells(3, 3).Value = Application.Min(dtarr(1), dtarr(2))
      ActiveSheet.Cells(4, 3).Value = Application.Max(dtarr(1), dtarr(2))

      Dim dblarr() As Double
      ReDim dblarr(1 To 2)

      dblarr(1) = CDbl(dtarr(1))
      dblarr(2) = CDbl(dtarr(2))

      ActiveSheet.Cells(3, 4).Value = Application.Min(dblarr)
      ActiveSheet.Cells(4, 4).Value = Application.Max(dblarr)

   End Sub