Using Excel VBA to search for "Filled" cell

Hi,

I'm using VBA in Excel 2010, and what seems like it should be a straightforward problem is turning out to have a wrinkle somewhere.  My client uses a "Fill" to highlight the cells that he wants to allow users to edit.  Everything not so shaded should be protected from editing.

The method for doing this is to start by protecting every cell, then search for the proper highlight and unprotect those.  By setting a HoldRange at the start of the search, I am assured that the procedure will go through its paces only once and then stop, because it will come back around on itself.  I then manually protect the sheet, at which point I can edit anything that's appropriate for me to do so, and I get an appropriate error message when attempting to edit a non-highlighted cell.  Although this process works, the catch is that when I record a macro to do the search and then run that search, the search fails, mysteriously.  As long as I "seed" it with a proper manual search, the code below works as advertised:

Sub find_Highlight_And_Unlock(UseSheet As Worksheet)
    Dim UseRange As Excel.Range
    Dim HoldRange As Excel.Range
    
    Dim lngCount As Long
    
    UseSheet.Activate
    Set UseRange = UseSheet.Range("A1")
    UseRange.Activate
    UseSheet.Cells.Find(What:="", After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=True).Activate
    Set HoldRange = UseSheet.Parent.activeRange
    HoldRange.Locked = False
    HoldRange.FormulaHidden = False
    ActiveSheet.Cells.Locked = True
    While (HoldRange.Address <> UseRange.Address)
        Set HoldRange = _
            Cells.Find(What:="", After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlFormulas, LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=True).Activate
        Selection.Locked = False
        Selection.FormulaHidden = False
    Wend
End Sub

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When I record myself searching for a highlight, VBA autogenerates this code, which doesn't succeed in finding anything when run:

With Application.FindFormat
    .Clear
    With .Interior
        .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
        .ThemeColor = xlThemeColorDark2
        .TintAndShade = -9.99481185338908E-02
        .PatternTintAndShade = 0
   End With
End With

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I would like for my code to work as a standalone, without the manual "seeding".  In fact, even better would be if my code could open the dialogue box that allows me to set the search format at runtime and then unlock the relevant highlighted cells.  Writing code to open the search dialogue box would be more intuitive and flexible than what I have now: a fixed highlight that doesn't work anyway.  

Any thoughts on how to do this?  ~Peter Ferber