Visualbasic microsoft

C Provides links into the documentation on application development with Visual C. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode. Is this page helpful? Please rate your experience Yes No. The ErrObject module contains properties and procedures used to identify and handle run-time errors using the Err object.

The FileSystem module contains the procedures that are used to perform file, directory or folder, and system operations. For more information, see FileSystem. The Financial module contains procedures used to perform financial operations. The Globals module contains script engine functions. The HideModuleNameAttribute attribute, when applied to a module, allows the module members to be accessed using only the qualification needed for the module.

The Information module contains the procedures used to return, test for, or verify information. The Interaction module contains procedures used to interact with objects, applications, and systems. This attribute supports My. Forms and My. WebServices in Visual Basic. The Strings module contains procedures used to perform string operations.

Indicates that an array in a structure or non-local variable should be treated as a fixed-length array. The VbMath module contains procedures used to perform mathematical operations. Indicates the window style to use for the invoked program when calling the Shell function.

Indicates the type of procedure being invoked when calling the CallByName function. You might think that writing code is mysterious or difficult, but the basic principles use every-day reasoning and are quite accessible. Microsoft Office applications are created in such a way that they expose things called objects that can receive instructions, in much the same way that a phone is designed with buttons that you use to interact with the phone.

When you press a button, the phone recognizes the instruction and includes the corresponding number in the sequence that you are dialing.

In programming, you interact with the application by sending instructions to various objects in the application. These objects are expansive, but they have their limits. They can only do what they are designed to do, and they will only do what you instruct them to do. For example, consider the user who opens a document in Word, makes a few changes, saves the document, and then closes it. Developers organize programming objects in a hierarchy, and that hierarchy is called the object model of the application.

Word, for example, has a top-level Application object that contains a Document object. The Document object contains Paragraph objects and so on. Object models roughly mirror what you see in the user interface. They are a conceptual map of the application and its capabilities. The definition of an object is called a class, so you might see these two terms used interchangeably. Technically, a class is the description or template that is used to create, or instantiate, an object.

Once an object exists, you can manipulate it by setting its properties and calling its methods. If you think of the object as a noun, the properties are the adjectives that describe the noun and the methods are the verbs that animate the noun. Changing a property changes some quality of appearance or behavior of the object. Calling one of the object methods causes the object to perform some action.

The VBA code in this article runs against an open Office application where many of the objects that the code manipulates are already up and running; for example, the Application itself, the Worksheet in Excel, the Document in Word, the Presentation in PowerPoint, the Explorer and Folder objects in Outlook.

Once you know the basic layout of the object model and some key properties of the Application that give access to its current state, you can start to extend and manipulate that Office application with VBA in Office. In Word, for example, you can change the properties and invoke the methods of the current Word document by using the ActiveDocument property of the Application object.

This ActiveDocument property returns a reference to the Document object that is currently active in the Word application. The following code does exactly what it says; that is, it saves the active document in the application. Read the code from left to right, "In this Application, with the Document referenced by ActiveDocument, invoke the Save method. You instruct a Document object to Save and it does not require any more input from you. If a method requires more information, those details are called parameters.

The following code runs the SaveAs method, which requires a new name for the file. Values listed in parentheses after a method name are the parameters. Here, the new name for the file is a parameter for the SaveAs method. You use the same syntax to set a property that you use to read a property. The following code executes a method to select cell A1 in Excel and then to set a property to put something in that cell.

The first challenge in VBA programming is to get a feeling for the object model of each Office application and to read the object, method, and property syntax. The object models are similar in all Office applications, but each is specific to the kind of documents and objects that it manipulates. In the first line of the code snippet, there is the Application object, Excel this time, and then the ActiveSheet , which provides access to the active worksheet.

After that is a term not as familiar, Range, which means "define a range of cells in this way. In other words, the first line of code defines an object, the Range, and runs a method against it to select it.

The result is automatically stored in another property of the Application called Selection. The second line of code sets the Value property of Selection to the text "Hello World", and that value appears in cell A1.

The simplest VBA code that you write might simply gain access to objects in the Office application that you are working with and set properties. For example, you could get access to the rows in a table in Word and change their formatting in your VBA script. That sounds simple, but it can be incredibly useful; once you can write that code, you can harness all of the power of programming to make those same changes in several tables or documents, or make them according to some logic or condition.

For a computer, making changes is no different from making 10, so there is an economy of scale here with larger documents and problems, and that is where VBA can really shine and save you time. Now that you know something about how Office applications expose their object models, you are probably eager to try calling object methods, setting object properties, and responding to object events.

To do so, you must write your code in a place and in a way that Office can understand; typically, by using the Visual Basic Editor. Although it is installed by default, many users do not know that it is even available until it is enabled on the ribbon.

All Office applications use the ribbon. One tab on the ribbon is the Developer tab, where you access the Visual Basic Editor and other developer tools. Because Office does not display the Developer tab by default, you must enable it by using the following procedure:. On the File tab, choose Options to open the Options dialog box. Under Choose commands from on the left side of the dialog box, select Popular Commands.

Under Customize the Ribbon on the right side of the dialog box, select Main Tabs in the drop down list box, and then select the Developer checkbox. In Office , you displayed the Developer tab by choosing the Office button, choosing Options , and then selecting the Show Developer tab in Ribbon check box in the Popular category of the Options dialog box.

After you enable the Developer tab, it is easy to find the Visual Basic and Macros buttons. To protect Office users against viruses and dangerous macro code, you cannot save macro code in a standard Office document that uses a standard file extension. Instead, you must save the code in a file with a special extension.

For example you cannot save macros in a standard Word document with a. When you open a. Examine the settings and options in the Trust Center on all Office applications.

The default setting disables macro from running, but warns you that macros have been disabled and gives you the option to turn them back on for that document. You can designate specific folders where macros can run by creating Trusted Locations, Trusted Documents, or Trusted Publishers.

The most portable option is to use Trusted Publishers, which works with digitally signed documents that you distribute. For more information about the security settings in a particular Office application, open the Options dialog box, choose Trust Center , and then choose Trust Center Settings.

Some Office applications, like Outlook, save macros by default in a master template on your local computer. Although that strategy reduces the local security issues on your own computer when you run your own macros, it requires a deployment strategy if you want to distribute your macro. When you choose the Macro button on the Developer tab, it opens the Macros dialog box, which gives you access to VBA subroutines or macros that you can access from a particular document or application.

Another button on the Developer tab in Word and Excel is the Record Macro button, which automatically generates VBA code that can reproduce the actions that you perform in the application. Record Macro is a terrific tool that you can use to learn more about VBA. Reading the generated code can give you insight into VBA and provide a stable bridge between your knowledge of Office as a user and your knowledge as a programmer.

The only caveat is that the generated code can be confusing because the Macro editor must make some assumptions about your intentions, and those assumptions are not necessarily accurate. Open Excel to a new Workbook and choose the Developer tab in the ribbon. Choose Record Macro and accept all of the default settings in the Record Macro dialog box, including Macro1 as the name of the macro and This Workbook as the location.

Choose OK to begin recording the macro. Note how the button text changes to Stop Recording. Choose that button the instant you complete the actions that you want to record. Choose cell B1 and type the programmer's classic first string: Hello World. Stop typing and look at the Stop Recording button; it is grayed out because Excel is waiting for you to finish typing the value in the cell. Choose cell B2 to complete the action in cell B1, and then choose Stop Recording.

Be aware of the similarities to the earlier code snippet that selected text in cell A1, and the differences.