I am trying to run a (rough) check on a column in an excel sheet to see if the user has entered valid e-mail addresses. In the organisation for which I work the format for an e-mail address is [email protected] Where there is more than one person with the same first and last names there is also a number after the firstname.lastname and before the @ symbol. As a general rule, if your e-mail address is [email protected] then your log-on to the restricted employee network is firstname.lastname (My log-on is one of the exceptions to this rule!) Therefore I think the most likely mistake users would make when filling out the spreadsheet is to leave off the “@myorganisation.gov.au”. To check for this, I want to use something like

Code:
For j = 1 to max_no
email_address = Cells(j + 1, 9)
If InStr(email_address, “@”) = 0 then
MsgBox(“This probably isn’t a valid e-mail address. Please check it.”
Cells(j + 1,9).Select
Cells(j + 1,9).Activate
GoTo Stop_Check
End if
Next j
Stop_Check:
The problem I have is that VBA doesn’t appear to recognise the @ symbol. How do I get around this?