Article ID: 178177
Article Last Modified on 10/10/2006
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 98 for Macintosh
This article was previously published under Q178177
SYMPTOMS
If you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro that displays a customized Office Assistant balloon, the balloon may not appear on the screen. When this problem occurs, the value of the BalloonError property of the Assistant object is set to 4 (msoBalloonErrorBadPictureRef).
CAUSE
This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:
The Text property of the new balloon has been set to include a picture, as in the following example:
With Assistant.NewBalloon .Text = "{<type> <location> <sizing_factor>}" .Show End With<Type> is either bmp, wmf, or pict, <location> is the path to the picture, and <sizing_factor> is an optional value that sets the width of the picture. -and-
The <location> includes a space, as in the following example:
.Text = "{bmp C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp}"
Specifically, the problem occurs because the space in the path causes the file location to be evaluated as "C:\Windows\My", not "C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp". If the picture cannot be found in the specified location, the balloon cannot be displayed, and the BalloonError property is set to 4.
WORKAROUND
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. To prevent this problem from occurring, enclose the location of the picture file in a double set of quotation marks, as in the following example:
With Assistant.NewBalloon
.Text = "{bmp ""C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp""}"
.Show
End With
When you run the macro, the balloon appears correctly, and the value of the BalloonError property is zero (0).
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.
REFERENCES
For additional 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: XL97 XL98 XL
Keywords: kbprb kbprogramming KB178177
