Skip to Main Content
Excel 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference
book

Excel 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference

by Paul T. Kimmel, Stephen Bullen, John Green, Rob Bovey, Robert Rosenberg
July 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
1176 pages
27h 45m
English
Wrox
Content preview from Excel 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference

27

SmartTags

When something is typed into a worksheet cell, Excel tries to interpret that entry, converting it to something more meaningful than a random set of characters. This is achieved using rules similar to the following:

  • If the entry contains the characters 0–9, and potentially the local thousand and decimal separators, it's a number that can be used in calculations
  • If the entry contains the characters 0–9 and the local date separator, it might be date that can be used in calculations (and implies a specific cell format)
  • If the entry is #N/A, #Value! etc., it's an error value that should propagate through any calculations that refer to it.
  • If the entry starts with an = sign, it could be a formula to be evaluated or a number
  • Otherwise, it's a text string—an essentially random set of characters

In each case, Excel is recognizing the entry as a specific data type—a number, date, formula, etc.—and by doing so gives that entry a specific set of behaviors, actions, and properties (those behaviors and actions that are defined for entries of that type). For example, all entries of type “Formula” have the following behaviors:

  • They need to be checked for “syntax” errors, such as mismatched brackets, etc.
  • They need to be incorporated into Excel's calculation dependency tree
  • They need to be evaluated
  • The cell should show the result of the evaluation, not the text of the formula

Up until Excel 2002, the rules for recognizing entries, and the list of applicable behaviors and properties ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Excel 2007 VBA Programming with XML and ASP

Excel 2007 VBA Programming with XML and ASP

Julitta Korol
Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Programming Inside Out

Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Programming Inside Out

Curtis Frye, Wayne S. Freeze, Felicia K. Buckingham
Excel® 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

Excel® 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

John Green, Stephen Bullen, Rob Bovey, Michael Alexander
Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

Teresa Hennig, Rob Cooper, Geoffrey Griffith, Armen Stein

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780764556609Purchase book