MS-Word / General Formatting

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User Input and Output

The following sections describe various methods of displaying information and obtaining input from the user.

MsgBox

The MsgBox command allows you to display a dialog box containing an informative message. MsgBox temporarily halts the macro until the user closes the message dialog box.

The MsgBox command has the following form:

MsgBox message [,buttons [,title] ]

message is the text to display in the message, buttons is a constant that indicates the type of buttons to display, and title is the title displayed in the dialog box title bar.

To display a simple message, use a command such as this one:

MsgBox "It's Saturday night!"

This command displays the dialog box.

Here's a MsgBox call that specifies the type of buttons and a title:

MsgBox "It's Saturday night!", vbOKCancel, "Live from London!"

The buttons argument controls three items at a time:

• Buttons that appear in the dialog box
• The icon that appears in the dialog box
• The button that is the default

(If you omit the default button argument, the first button is assumed to be the default.) Table-2 lists the values for these settings.

Table-2 MsgBox Type Values

Group	Constant	Meaning
Buttons	vbOKOnly	OK only
	vbOKCancel	OK and Cancel
	vbAbortRetry Ignore	Abort, Retry, and Ignore
	vbYesNoCancel	Yes, No, and Cancel
	vbYesNo	Yes and No
	vbRetryCancel	Retry and Cancel
Icon	vbCritical	Critical icon
	vbQuestion	A question mark
	vbExclamation	An exclamation mark
	vbInformation	Information only
Default button	vbDefault Button1	First button (OK, Yes, or Abort)
	vbDefault Button2	Second button (Cancel, No, or Retry)
	vbDefault Button3	vbDefault Button3

You can put these constants together to create composite styles. For example, this MsgBox command displays OK and Cancel buttons and a Stop symbol and makes the Cancel button the default:

MsgBox "It's Saturday night!", vbOKCancel + vbExclamation +
    vbDefaultButton2, "Live from London!"

The resulting dialog box shown.

MsgBox returns a value that indicates which button was clicked, as described in Table-3.

Table-3 MsgBox Return Values

Constant Numeric 	Value 		Button That Is Clicked
vbOK 			1 		OK button
vbCancel 		2 		Cancel
vbAbort 		3 		Abort
vbRetry 		4 		Retry
vbIgnore 		5 		Ignore
vbYes 			6 		Yes
vbNo 			7 		No

InputBox

The VBA function InputBox displays a dialog box that includes a single text field in which the user can type a response. The user's input is then returned to the macro as the function's return value.

The InputBox function accepts three arguments:

InputBox(prompt [,title] [,default])

For example, the following InputBox function asks the user to enter a name:

Name=InputBox("Type a name:")

This example shows how to provide your own title for the input dialog box and display a default choice:

Name=InputBox("Type a name:", "The Name Game", UserName)

The user's response returns in the Name variable. The dialog box that's displayed.