Basics of VB Programming

Message Boxes are used to display information to the user. You see them all the time in Windows and other programs.

Message boxes can be called like this:

MsgBox Prompt, Buttons/Icon, Title

The prompt is basically what you want it to say, the buttons/icon is what buttons you want and which icon you want and title is really self explanatory. e.g.

Msgbox "This is a test.",vbCritical,"Title"  

You can use the following constants for buttons:

• vbOkOnly
• vbOkCancel
• vbYesNo
• vbYesNoCancel
• vbAbortRetryIgnore
• vbRetryCancel

and these constants for icons:

• vbQuestion
• vbInformation
• vbExclamation
• vbCritical

An important thing that you need to be able to do is to translate what the user has done. e.g.

Dim iRes As Integer
iRes=MsgBox("Test Question?",vbYesNo+vbQuestion,"Title"
If iRes=vbYes Then
  Msgbox "The Yes button was clicked."
Else
  Msgbox "The No button was clicked."
End If

To include the contents of a control, such as a text box, you can use the ampersand character (&) to concentate the prompt string (see No Strings Attached). e.g.

Msgbox "The contents is:" & Text1.Text

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This article was originally published on November 20, 2002