Microsoft Office

Part VI
Programming Excel with VBA
More on Creating UserForms
Creating UserForms can make your macros much more versatile. You can create custom commands that
display dialog boxes that look exactly like those that Excel uses. This section contains some additional
information to help you develop custom dialog boxes that work like those that are built into Excel.
Adding accelerator keys
Custom dialog boxes should not discriminate against those who prefer to use the keyboard rather than a
mouse. All of Excel’s dialog boxes work equally well with a mouse and a keyboard because each control has
an associated accelerator key. The user can press Alt plus the accelerator key to work with a specific dialog
box control.
Adding accelerator keys to your UserForms is a good idea. You do this in the Properties window by entering
a character for the Accelerator property.
The letter that you enter as the accelerator key must be a letter that is contained in the caption of the object.
It can be any letter in the text (not necessarily the first letter). You should make sure that an accelerator key
is not duplicated in a UserForm. If you have duplicate accelerator keys, the accelerator key acts on the first
control in the tab order of the UserForm. Then, pressing the accelerator key again takes you to the next
control.
Some controls (such as edit boxes) don’t have a caption property. You can assign an accelerator key to a
label that describes the control. Pressing the accelerator key then activates the next control in the tab order
(which you should ensure is the edit box).
Controlling tab order
The previous section refers to a UserForm’s tab order. When you’re working with a UserForm, pressing Tab
and Shift+Tab cycles through the dialog box’s controls. When you create a UserForm, you should make sure
that the tab order is correct. Usually, it means that tabbing should move through the controls in a logical
sequence.
To view or change the tab order in a UserForm, choose View ➪ Tab Order to display the Tab Order dialog
box. You can then select a control from the list; use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to change the tab
order for the selected control.
Learning More
Mastering UserForms takes practice. You should closely examine the dialog boxes that Excel uses to get a
feeling for how dialog boxes are designed. You can duplicate many of the dialog boxes that Excel uses.
The best way to learn more about creating dialog boxes is by using the VBA Help system.
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