Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Common Members

Most objects in Excel have several members in common as listed in Table 4-5.

Table 4-5. Common Excel object members

Member	Description	Use to
Application	Returns the Excel Application object	This isn’t really useful from within Excel since the Application object is readily available anyway. It’s somewhat useful when programming Excel from other applications, however.
Creator	Returns a numeric code identifying the application that created the object	Again, this isn’t really useful from within Excel. You can pretty much ignore this property.
Parent	Returns the next-higher object in Excel’s object hierarchy	Map Excel’s object hierarchy.
Name	Returns a string describing the object	Display information about an object or get a specific object from a collection.

You might be able to tell from Table 4-5 that the Name property is the most useful of the common members . Most (but not all) Excel objects have a Name property that identifies the object within its containing collection. For example, Worksheets("Sheet1") returns the worksheet with the Name property Sheet1.

That’s not true for all objects, however. The Range object, for instance, has an Address property instead of a Name property. Other objects, such as Window, use the Caption property, instead. Table 4-6 categorizes some of the common members that aren’t as universal as those listed in Table 4-5, but are actually more useful to know.

Table 4-6. Other useful, common members by category

Category	Member	Use to
General	Activate	Set focus on an object.
	Caption	Set or return the text that appears in an object’s titlebar.
	Value	Set or return the value displayed by an object. This is often the default property of an object.
Collections	Add	Create a new object and add it to the collection.
	Count	Get the number of objects in a collection.
	Index	Get the position of an object within a collection (use on the object, not the collection).
	Item( )	Get an object by name or index from a collection. This is the default property of most collections.
	Delete	Remove an object from a collection (use on the object, not the collection).
Appearance	Height	Set or return the height of an object in points. (There are 72 points in an inch.)
	Left	Set or return the horizontal position of an object in points.
	Top	Set or return the vertical position of an object in points.
	Visible	Show or hide an object (True/False).
	Width	Set or return the width of an object in points.
Printing	PrintOut	Print an object.
	PrintPreview	View the object before printing.

The following sections explain using these common members.