Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA

Chapter 10: Custom Dialog Box Alternatives

In This Chapter

• Using an input box to get user input

• Using a message box to display messages or get a simple response

• Selecting a file from a dialog box

• Selecting a directory

• Displaying Excel's built-in dialog boxes

Before You Create That UserForm . . .

Dialog boxes are a key user interface element in many Windows programs. Virtually every Windows program uses them, and most users have a good understanding of how they work. Excel developers implement custom dialog boxes by creating UserForms. However, VBA provides the means to display some built-in dialog boxes, with minimal programming required.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of creating UserForms (beginning with Chapter 11), you might find it helpful to understand some of Excel's built-in tools that display dialog boxes. The sections that follow describe various dialog boxes that you can display using VBA, and without creating a UserForm.

Using an Input Box

An input box is a simple dialog box that allows the user to make a single entry. For example, you can use an input box to let the user enter text or a number or even select a range. You can generate an InputBox in two ways: by using a VBA function and by using a method of the Application object. These are two different objects, and I explain each in the sections that follow.

The VBA InputBox function

The syntax for VBA's InputBox function is

InputBox(prompt[,title][,default][,xpos][,ypos][,helpfile, context])

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