Ch 11: Userforms CP212 Winter 2010

Topics Designing User Forms o Controls Setting Properties 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 ProgrammingWindows 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 read- only - 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 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 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

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 Tab Order

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 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 Next

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

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 = ' 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 = ' 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