Article ID: 177271
Article Last Modified on 1/22/2007
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Word 97 Standard Edition
This article was previously published under Q177271
SYMPTOMS
When you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications procedure or macro that was converted from a WordBasic procedure or macro that contained error trapping, the error trap is ignored though it worked as expected when run in WordBasic.
CAUSE
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By design, the On Error statement in Visual Basic works differently from WordBasic. In Visual Basic, On Error is not cleared when an error occurs, while in WordBasic, the On Error statement is cleared, the error trap is reset, and your code continues to run.
Therefore, the following sample converted WordBasic code fails when an error occurs the second time.
Sub Main() ' Clear error trap. Set error trap. On Error GoTo -1: On Error GoTo ErrorTrap ' Loop 10 times. For i = 1 To 10 ' Artificially raise an error. Err.Raise 5 ErrorTrap: ' Decision tree based on error returned. If Err.Number = 0 Then ' If no error occurred, do this... count_ = count_ + 1 Else ' Else, if error occurred, do this... Err.Number = 0 End If Next End Sub
RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, make the On Error statement the first statement inside the loop.
Sub Main() ' Loop 10 times. For i = 1 To 10 ' Clear error trap. Set error trap. On Error GoTo -1: On Error GoTo ErrorTrap ' Artificially raise an error. Err.Raise 5 ErrorTrap: ' Decision tree based on error returned. If Err.Number = 0 Then ' If no error occurred, do this... count_ = count_ + 1 Else ' Else if error occurred, do this... Err.Number = 0 End If Next End Sub
In this example, the Err.Raise statement artificially raises an error for demonstration purposes. When the error occurs and the next iteration of the loop occurs, the "On Error GoTo -1" statement clears the error trap and the "On Error GoTo ErrorTrap" statement resets the error trap. The loop continues to process without interruption until it completes the designated number of iterations (10).
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.
REFERENCES
For more information about the On Error Statement, click the Office Assistant in the Visual Basic Editor, type On Error, click Search, and then click to view "On Error Statement."
NOTE: If the Assistant is hidden, click the Office Assistant button on the Standard toolbar. If Word Help is not installed on your computer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
120802 Office: How to Add/Remove a Single Office Program or Component
For more information about getting help with Visual Basic for Applications, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
163435 VBA: Programming Resources for Visual Basic for Applications
Additional query words: wordcon vba
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