Excel.Tips.Net Welcome toExcel.Tips.Net

Helpful Links

Tips.Net Home
ExcelTips Home
Ask an Excel Question
Make a Comment

Tips.Net Store

ExcelTips FAQ
ExcelTips Premium

Learn Access Now
Free Printable Forms

Beauty Tips
Car Tips
Cleaning Tips
Cooking Tips
ExcelTips (menu)
ExcelTips (ribbon)
Family Tips
Gardening Tips
Health Tips
Home Tips
Legal Tips
Money Tips
Organizing Tips
Pest Tips
Pet Tips
School Tips
Wedding Tips
WordTips (menu)
WordTips (ribbon)

Advertise on the
ExcelTips Site

Newest Tips

Ctrl+V Pasting is Flakey

Working with Imperial Linear Distances

Counting Unique Values

Incomplete and Corrupt Sorting

Quickly Removing a Toolbar Button

Returning the MODE of a Range

Deriving High and Low Non-Zero Values

 

Creating a String in a Macro

Summary: Need to put together a bunch of characters to create a text string? You can do it in your macros by using the String function, explained here. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Creating a String in a Macro.)

What do you do if you need a string of 80 equal signs or 25 spaces in your macro? Use the String function. This function is used to create strings of repeating characters. Consider the following examples:

sNew1 = String(25, 32)
sNew2 = String(25, " ")
sNew3 = String(80, "=")
sNew4 = String(20, "=*")

The first and second lines are functionally the same; they both produce a line of 25 spaces. In the first example, the ANSI value of 32 is used, which is the character code for a space. In the third line, sNew3 will be equal to 80 equal signs.

The fourth line produces a 20-character string of equal signs. This can be a bit frustrating to programmers familiar with other implementations of BASIC, as to them the last example should create a 40-character string of alternating equal signs and asterisks. (Under older versions of BASIC, the String function concatenates whatever you designate, so one could expect this to create a 40-character string made up of 20 iterations of "=*". Not so; VBA does not implement the String function as is done in other BASICs.)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2325) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Creating a String in a Macro.

PivotTables Got You Perplexed? PivotTables for the Faint of Heart shows how you can start using Excel's PivotTable tool right away to spin your data into gold! You discover how easy it really is to crunch the numbers you need to crunch. Uncover the power of creating PivotTables, editing them, formatting them, customizing them, and much more.
 
Check out PivotTables for the Faint of Heart today!