Article ID: 106500
Article Last Modified on 10/11/2006
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Excel 95 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Macintosh
This article was previously published under Q106500
SUMMARY
In Microsoft Excel, if you attempt to concatenate a text variable and a string without inserting a space after the variable, you may receive the following error message:
MORE INFORMATION
In general, when you use spaces in Visual Basic code, these spaces do not affect the meaning of the code. However, if you enter the following code
Text="is a"
MsgBox("This "&Text&" Test")
and you leave out a space between the variable name "Text" and the ampersand (&), you will receive the error message:
This error occurs because when an ampersand appears after a variable name, it is interpreted as a type-declaration character. In this example, the ampersand after the variable name "Text" indicates that Text is being declared as a Long data type. When the ampersand is interpreted this way, the rest of the line of code does not make sense. When you insert a space between the text variable and the ampersand, the ampersand character is recognized as the text concatenation operator and the error is eliminated.
You can also use the plus sign (+) for text concatenation as in the following example:
Text="is a"
MsgBox("This " + Text + " Test")
In the above example, spaces are added automatically.
REFERENCES
For more information about type-declaration characters, in Visual Basic Help, choose the Search button and type:
type-declaration characters
Additional query words: XL
Keywords: kbprogramming KB106500
