Automatic Interface

[Dave Neve]

Hi

I'm working out of a book on VB6 although this version has apparently been
superceeded by VBA.

However, the book does mention an assistant to create applications but I
can't find the equivalent in my VBA attached to Word 2002.

Does the assistant exist cos it would be great for a beginner like me?

I can't find it in aide but to complicate matters by book is in French and
XP in English so I'm never sure of the English word to look up.

Thanks in advance

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi

I'm working out of a book on VB6 although this version has apparently been
superceeded by VBA.

However, the book does mention an assistant to create applications but I
can't find the equivalent in my VBA attached to Word 2002.

Does the assistant exist cos it would be great for a beginner like me?

I can't find it in aide but to complicate matters by book is in French and
XP in English so I'm never sure of the English word to look up.

Thanks in advance

Hi, Dave,

As Jonathan told you in a reply to your earlier post, VB and VBA are
*not* the same. It also is *not* true that VB6 is superseded by VBA --
they are different products for different purposes. It might be said
that VB is superseded by VB.Net, though there are some who would argue
about that.

VB is a complete development environment for creating standalone
executable programs, but VBA is embedded inside Office programs and
can't run outside them.

There is no assistant or wizard for creating VBA macros. There is a
macro recorder, which you can start in Word or Excel from the menu
Tools > Macro > Record New Macro. (Although Access and Outlook also
support VBA macros, they don't have a recorder.) For a quick guide,
see http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/UsingRecorder.htm.

You should understand from the beginning that the macro recorder does
not make very good code. Sometimes it doesn't make any code at all --
for instance, it never records moving things by dragging with the
mouse, only things you do with keystrokes. When it records dialogs, it
throws in the values for all of the options in the dialog, not just
the ones you changed. When it records manipulation of text, it always
uses the Selection object, but it would usually be better to use a
Range object. Finally, it has no way to make loops to repeat steps.
Basically, it's good only for telling you what commands to study in
the Help topics so you can rewrite the recorded macro.