Microsoft Office

Part VI
Programming Excel with VBA
ON the CD-ROM
This macro is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is named skip blanks while looping.xlsm.
Prompting for a cell value
As discussed in Chapter 41, you can take advantage of VBA’s InputBox function to ask the user to enter a
value. Figure 44.2 shows an example.
FIGURE 44.2
Using VBA’s InputBox function to get a value from the user.
You can assign this value to a variable and use it in your procedure. Often, however, you want to place the
value into a cell. The following procedure demonstrates how to ask the user for a value and place it into cell
A1 of the active worksheet, using only one statement:
Sub GetValue()
Range(“A1”).Value = InputBox(“Enter the value for cell A1”)
End Sub
Determining the type of selection
If your macro is designed to work with a range selection, you need to determine that a range is actually
selected. Otherwise, the macro most likely fails. The following procedure identifies the type of object that is
currently selected:
ON the CD-ROM
Sub SelectionType()
MsgBox TypeName(Selection)
End Sub
A workbook that contains this macro is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is
named selection type.xlsm.
If a cell or a range is selected, the MsgBox displays Range. If your macro is designed to work only with
ranges, you can use an If statement to ensure that a range is actually selected. The following is an example
that displays a message and exits the procedure if the current selection is not a Range object:
Sub CheckSelection()
If TypeName(Selection) “Range” Then
MsgBox “Select a range.”
Exit Sub
End If
‘ ... [Other statements go here]
End Sub
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