VB & VBA in a Nutshell: The Language

4.6. Using ActiveX Components in a Project

If the ActiveX object you need to reference provides a type library and is registered on your computer, you can create a reference to the component using the References dialog. This includes the component's properties, methods, and events in the Intellisense drop-down list and provides statement completion for its properties, methods, and events. Furthermore, this enables you to early bind to the component's classes.

If the ActiveX object either doesn't provide a type library, or you don't know at design time which classes of a component you will need, you should use late binding.

4.6.1. Manually Registering and Unregistering ActiveX Components

There are occasions when you need to use an ActiveX component in your project, and the DLL is available on your machine, but it isn't registered. In this situation, you must manually register the component before you can use it. Fortunately, ActiveX components are designed to be self-registering: every ActiveX DLL contains information about itself that Windows can write to the registry using a program called RegSvr32.exe. For example, to register a DLL called myServer.DLL :

1. Click the Windows Start button and select Run.

2. Type RegSvr32 c:\windows\system32\myserver.dll, or the precise path of the DLL. If you don't know where the DLL is stored, you can locate it using Explorer, type RegSvr32 in the Run dialog, then select the DLL and drag it to the text box in the Run dialog; the complete path ...