Microsoft KB Archive/194611

= How To Create and Call an Excel Macro Programmatically from VB =

Article ID: 194611

Article Last Modified on 1/23/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q194611



SUMMARY
This article demonstrates how you can create a Microsoft Excel VBA macro programmatically from Microsoft Visual Basic, call it, and associate it with a toolbar button.



MORE INFORMATION
Follow the steps below to create the sample application:  Create a Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default. Click References from the Project menu and check "Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility." Add a CommandButton to Form1.  Copy and paste the following code to the form's code window: Private Sub Command1_Click ' Start Excel Dim xlapp As Object 'Excel.Application Set xlapp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

' Make it visible... xlapp.Visible = True

' Add a new workbook Dim xlbook As Object 'Excel.Workbook Set xlbook = xlapp.Workbooks.Add

' Add a module Dim xlmodule As Object 'VBComponent Set xlmodule = xlbook.VBProject.VBComponents.Add(1) 'vbext_ct_StdModule

' Add a macro to the module... Dim strCode As String strCode = _ "sub MyMacro" & vbCr & _ "  msgbox ""Inside generated macro!!!"" " & vbCr & _ "end sub" xlmodule.CodeModule.AddFromString strCode

' Run the new macro! xlapp.Run "MyMacro"

' ** Create a new toolbar with a button to fire macro...      ' Add a new toolbar... Dim cbs As Object 'CommandBars Dim cb As Object 'CommandBar Set cbs = xlapp.CommandBars Set cb = cbs.Add("MyCommandBar", 1,, True) '1=msoBarTop cb.Visible = True

' Make it visible & add a button... Dim cbc As Object 'CommandBarControl Set cbc = cb.Controls.Add(1) '1=msoControlButton

' Assign our button to our macro cbc.OnAction = "MyMacro"

' Set text... cbc.Caption = "Call MyMacro"

' Set Face image... ' 51 = white hand ' 25 = glasses ' 34 = ink dipper ' etc... cbc.FaceId = 51

' Pause so you can inspect results... MsgBox "All done, click me to continue...", vbMsgBoxSetForeground

' Remember to release module Set xlmodule = Nothing

' Clean up      xlbook.Saved = True xlapp.Quit End Sub  Run the application. You should see Microsoft Excel launch, followed by a message box saying "Inside generated macro!!!." At this point, you are executing code inside your generated macro. Click OK to dismiss this dialog box and you should then see a dialog box reporting "All done, click me to continue." Leave this up, and switch to Excel. There should be a new toolbar visible, with a button with a white-hand icon. The Visual Basic code above associated this button with your macro, MyMacro, via the OnAction property. When you click this button, MyMacro gets called. Click it once to see it work. Click back to the form in Visual Basic and click OK on the "All done, click me to continue" message box.

Additional Notes for Office XP
Office XP applications have a security option to allow programmatic access to the VBA object model. If this setting is "off" (the default), you may receive an error running the sample code. For more information about this setting and how you can correct the error, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

282830 PRB: Programmatic Access to Office XP VBA Project Is Denied

Keywords: kbautomation kbhowto KB194611

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