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Part II: How VBA Works with Excel
Object properties
Every object has properties. You can think of properties as attributes that
describe the object. An object’s properties determine how it looks, how it
behaves, and even whether it is visible. Using VBA, you can do two things
with an object’s properties:
✓ Examine the current setting for a property.
✓ Change the property’s setting.
For example, a single-cell Range object has a property called Value. The
Value property stores the value contained in the cell. You can write VBA
code to display the Value property, or you may write VBA code to set the
Value property to a specific value. The following macro uses the VBA builtin
MsgBox function to bring up a box that displays the value in cell A1 on
Sheet1 of the active workbook. See Figure 4-2.
Sub ShowValue()
Contents = Worksheets(“Sheet1”).Range(“A1”).Value
MsgBox Contents
End Sub
Figure 4-2:
This message
box
displays
a Range
object’s
Value
property.
By the way, MsgBox is a very useful function. You can use it to display results
while Excel executes your VBA code. I tell you more about this function in
Chapter 15, so be patient (or just skip and read all about it).
The code in the preceding example displays the current setting of a cell’s
Value property. What if you want to change the setting for that property?
The following macro changes the value in cell A1 by changing the cell’s Value
property:
Sub ChangeValue()
Worksheets(“Sheet1”).Range(“A1”).Value = 994.92
End Sub