Writing Word Macros, Second Edition

Chapter 5. Variables, Data Types, and Constants

In this chapter:

• Comments

• Line Continuation

• Constants

• Variables and Data Types

• VBA Operators

In the next few chapters, I discuss the basics of the VBA programming language, which underlies all of the Microsoft Office programming environments. During the discussion, I provide many short coding examples. I hope that you will take the time to enter some of these examples and experiment with them.

Comments

We have already examined the importance of comments. Any text that follows an apostrophe is considered a comment and is ignored by Word. For example, the first following line is a comment, as is everything following the apostrophe on the third line:

' Declare a string variable
	Dim DocName as String
	DocName = ActiveDocument.Name   ' Get name of active doc

One of the more useful tools when debugging code is to temporarily comment out lines of code so that they will not execute. The lines can subsequently be uncommented to restore them to active duty. The CommentBlock and UncommentBlock buttons, which can be found on the Edit toolbar, will place or remove comment marks from each currently selected line of code and are very useful for commenting out several lines of code in one step. (There are no keyboard shortcuts for these commands, but they can be added to a menu and given menu accelerator keys.)