Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Objects and Their Members

The most obvious difference between objects and other parts of the Visual Basic language is the dot notation. Objects use the period (or dot) to separate the object name from the member name as shown in Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1. The dot separates the object from the member

Member is the general term for a property, method, enumeration, or constant that belongs to the object. Objects help organize members by grouping them into functional units. Objects are used throughout Visual Basic to organize things. In fact, if you type VBA. in the Code window, you’ll see a list of the functions that are part of the Visual Basic language (Figure 4-2).

Figure 4-2. Visual Basic uses objects to organize its members

The VBA object library even uses dot syntax to organize other objects. For example, type VBA.Strings. and you’ll see a list of the string functions. The symbols in the Auto Complete list identify the type of member, as shown in Figure 4-3.

Figure 4-3. Objects can use other objects to organize members, and the type of member is illustrated by an icon

In Figure 4-3, the Library symbol identifies a grouping of related members ; the Enumeration symbol identifies a grouping ...