VB & VBA in a Nutshell: The Language

2.1. Getting a VB Program to Run

Regardless of the type of application you're writing and the development tool (hosted VBA or the retail version of VB) you're using, there has to be a starting point or an entry point for your program. Here there is a major difference between VB and VBA: a VB application is launched as an application in its own right, whereas the VBA program has to be launched by the host application. But in either case, the starting point you choose is decided by the type of application you are writing, as well as by the facilities offered by your development environment for launching applications. In this section, we'll look at the methods available to you for starting your application.

Because VBA is now hosted in a wide range of different applications, each of which has its own ways of launching an application or routine, it's impossible to describe here how to start your program running in each. Instead, we'll focus on the two most popular applications for hosted VBA, Word and Excel.

In discussing the launching of VBA programs in Word and Excel, I mention using the application's user interface to launch the program using a keyboard combination or a toolbar button. This can also be done programmatically. A discussion of how to do so, however, is beyond the scope of this book.

2.1.1. Running VBA Modules in Word

A Word/VBA program can take a multitude of ...