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Assigning a Macro to a Keyboard Combination

Creating Scenarios

Using Message Boxes

Understanding Phantom Macros

Picking a Group of Cells

Running Out of Memory

Hiding Rows Based on a Cell Value

 

Continuing Macro Lines

Summary: The Visual Basic Editor, where you write macros, allows you to enter very long macro lines, if desired. While it is possible to do that, it may not be the best for reading the macro later. It is much better to split the macro line so that it spans multiple lines. This tip explains how. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)

When you are creating a macro, you may run into some very long lines. The VBA Editor will handle long lines, but it is usually a pain to scroll the screen left and right to review a line. Some programming languages (such as C or Perl) allow you to continue program lines simply by pressing Enter and continuing with the line.

VBA, however, requires a special character sequence to signify that you want to continue the current program line on the next. This sequence consists of a space and an underscore. Consider the following example code:

MsgBox "Please revise the entry in A1." & Chr(13) _
  & "It appears to contain one or more " & Chr(13) _
  & "illegal characters." & Chr(13)
Range("A1").Activate

This code continues a program line over three physical lines by using the space and underscore at the end of each line being continued. You can use the continuation characters to continue any programming lines you desire. The only thing you need to remember is that you can only use the characters for continuation purposes if you place them between regular tokens or keywords used in the program line. If you place them in the middle of a keyword or in a string (between quote marks), VBA won't know what you intended, and may generate an error.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2263) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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