Ch 11: Userforms
CP212 Winter 2010
Topics
• Designing User Forms
o Controls
• Setting Properties
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o Tab Order
o Testing
Writing Event Handlers
o Userform_Initialize
o btnCancel_Click
Displaying a User Form
Looping Through Controls
Working with Listboxes
Working with Excel Controls
Background
• some information covered in the lecture on interface design
• textbook calls a Userform a “dialog box”
o can be much more than that
• called simply a form in Visual Basic
o related topic: Windows Forms Programming
• example in text
o complex spreadsheet
o form gives the user options to choose from
o easier to use this “application” than learn Excel
Starting a Form
• creating a GUI based application or form starts with
designing the form
• to insert a form in VBE
o Insert -> Userform
o Toolbox gets displayed - sometimes it disappears
 click View -> Toolbox to get it back
Designing the Form
Need to know 3 things:
• Which controls are available
• How to place, resize and line up controls in a form
• How to set the properties
Controls
Common Uses
• CommandButton: allows user to execute
code (subs or macros)
• Label: explain something
• Textbox: get input from the user (can be readonly - set Enabled property to False)
Common Uses
• ListBox: choose one or more items from a list
• ComboBox: like a listbox, but allows a custom item to be
added that isn't in the list.
• CheckBox: any, none, or all of the boxes can be selected
• OptionButton: also called a radio button, only one option
can be selected (usually one is mandatory) per group
• Frame: organize a set of options, or grouping of controls
• RefEdit: similar to a textbox but also allows user to select a
range of cells
Custom Controls
• Right-click on the toolbox and select Additional Controls
• One good one is the Calendar tool:
o Calendar Control 12.0 (but there are others)
The calendar control was removed in Office 2010. You can either buy a new one, or create your own. That would be a good
exercise, and has been used as part of an assignment in the past.
Laying Controls
• To help, controls can be resized and aligned to each other or
the form
• Format -> Align, Format -> Make Same Size
o Experiment with it
Setting Properties
• most controls have different properties
• some are common
• Name: used to refer to the control with
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VBA Code
o name not necessary if you plan on
not referring to it with code (like
labels)
Caption: what you see on the screen,
usually on forms, buttons and labels.
Text or Value: What gets displayed in a
Textbox.
Most Properties can be set at design
time (in the VBE) or with code
Naming controls
• use a 3 letter prefix
• good exercise on pg 213 of text
Tab Order
• can greatly improve the usefulness of your form
• tab order begins as the order in which you placed them on
the form
• you can change the TabIndex property
• TabIndex starts at 0
• Set TabStop to False if you don't want the user tabbing to it.
• Items in a frame are indexed separately from other items on
the form.
• View TabOrder
Writing Event Handlers
• a GUI program (or a form) just sits there and waits for events
• a subroutine written to execute when the event happens is
called an event handler
• events handlers are placed in the form's code window, not a
module
• when viewing a form, click View -> Code or double-click a
control
• double-clicking a control will open the event handler for that
control's default event (like CommandButton1_Click)
• event handlers are named controlname_EventName
• try it and use the Object Browser to learn more
o RefEdit control has its own library... hard to find
Displaying a Form
• give the form a name
• insert a new module and create a sub to display the form
Public Sub Display()
' Shows the form I want to use
frmMyForm.Show
End Sub
• form will appear and then the event handlers take over
Example Code from text (pg.221)
Shown here is a Window XP screenshot.
Practice Form.xlsm (pg. 223)
• code for adding items to a list
o For Loop or RowSource property
• variables declared Public at the top of the code window, so
they can be accessed from inside the form as well
• Useful functions: IsNumeric and IsDate to check for data
validation
• can use Exit Sub if an error occurs but you still want form to
be displayed
Practice Form cont'd
• use Select Case for option buttons
o optTruck.Value = True if it has been selected
• Value property of a listbox: Indicates which item was
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selected.
o ListIndex: position in the list of the selected item, base 0
o If ListIndex = -1 then no item selected
o make bulletproof code: set ListIndex = 0 in
UserForm_Initialize, forcing user to make a selection
Must Unload the form to remove it from the screen
When unloaded, the original calling sub will continue
Looping Through Controls
• have many controls on a form and you want to check all of
them
would be easy if they were in an array
o can't be done in VBA
so use For Each... in the collection of Controls on the form:
Dim ctl As Control
For Each ctl In Me.Controls
If TypeName(ctl) = "TextBox" Then
If ctl.Value = "" or Not IsDate(ctl) Then
MsgBox "Enter valid dates", vbInformation, "Invalid Entry"
ctl.SetFocus ' Allows user to enter data again
Exit Sub
End If
End If
Next
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List Boxes
• two types: single and multi
• use MultiSelect property
• Single
o ListIndex = -1 means Nothing selected
o ListIndex = 3 means the 4th item was selected
o lstMyList.Value will also hold the selected item
Multi
o can't use Value or ListIndex
o Selected property is a 0-based array of True or False
values
o ListCount will count the items in the list
For i = 0 to lstProducts.ListCount -1
isChosen(i) = lstProducts.Selected(i)
Next
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Private Sub btnOk_Click()
' Display the value the user has selected in the list
txtOutput.Text = lstBox.Value
txtIndexValue.Text = lstBox.ListIndex
End Sub
Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()
' Restore default height
Me.Height = 310.5
' Add items to the list
lstBox.AddItem "One"
lstBox.AddItem "Two"
lstBox.AddItem ("Four")
lstBox.AddItem "Three", 2
lstExtended.AddItem ("One")
lstExtended.AddItem ("Two")
lstExtended.AddItem ("Four")
lstExtended.AddItem "Three", 2
lstExtended.AddItem "Five"
lstExtended.AddItem "Six"
lstExtended.AddItem "Seven"
' Clear the values in the list box
lstMulti.Clear
' Get values from the spreadsheet
Dim c As Range
For Each c In Worksheets("wksData").Range("defaultValues")
' Add each item to the list
lstMulti.AddItem c.Value
Next
Private Sub btnChooseEnhanced_Click()
Dim mySelections As String
Dim isChosen() As String
' Resize the array based on the size of items in the list
ReDim isChosen(lstExtended.ListCount)
' Show the hidden portion of the form.
Me.Height = 396.75
' Place the selected items in an array
For i = 0 To lstExtended.ListCount - 1
' Check to see if the item was selected
If lstExtended.Selected(i) Then
' If it was selected, place it in the array
isChosen(i) = lstExtended.List(i)
' This produces gaps in the output if items were not selected.
End If
Next
' Create a string of all the items joined together
mySelections = Join(isChosen, ", ")
txtMultiOutput.Text = mySelections
End Sub
Wrap Up
• Check pg. 230 about working with Excel controls (little or no
VBA)
• read the summary, work on exercises 1, 2, 4