Comments on: Properties and Object Continued

By: Jan Karel Pieterse

Jan Karel Pieterse — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:25:00 +0000

Jon: I do too, but “entire word” didn’t help in the example I gave
Thanks for the MZ tip, I need to look at that!

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:22:00 +0000

Jan Karel -

I've learned to use the "entire word" option when doing a global search and replace on my code.

The "Find" feature in MZ Tools actually lists all instances of a search term, and it's helpful to be able to see where and how the term is used.

By: Bob Phillips

Bob Phillips — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0000

That's my experience Doug. I can declare variables badly with no problem, and I can use that happily (or unhappily) thereafter. many times I have declared something like

Dim row As Long

and later using the row property shows as

Range("G1?).row

that is, row is not proper case, it takes my variable case.

By: Jan Karel Pieterse

Jan Karel Pieterse — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:12:00 +0000

I try to avoid using existing “words” and object/method/property- names like the plague, because they tend to confuse me if I revisit the code later on. It can also lead to unexpected problems:

I once did a search and replace in a file where someone used an object variable called “Public CodeBook As Workbook”. It was used like so:
Set CodeBook = ThisWorkbook
So since we already have ThisWorkbook available I did a global Search and replace through the code, but made a small mistake: I also replaced the declaration, which became:
Public ThisworkBook As Workbook.
All of a sudden, I started to get Object variable not set errors on each line that addressed the Thisworkbook object.
Not realising I changed that declaration line, I thought I had corrupted the VBA project of the file. It took me over an hour to find the problem.
The punch line: Don’t use reserved words or existing names. More importantly: be careful when doing S&R in code

By: Doug Glancy

Doug Glancy — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:34:00 +0000

Yikes! I have the 2002 version of that book. I haven’t looked at it for a while, but it has a similarly long Appendix A, followed by the VBE and Office XP object models. I have to admit I prefer reading blogs .

I’ve never seen a variable turn red because it was a reserved word. I just created a subroutine and declared Application, Property, Range, Name, SpecialCells, ActiveSheet and some others as doubles and assigned them values. Not a peep from the IDE and it ran fine. I did get a couple of compile errors for declaring Application and ActiveSheet as public variables in the ThisWorkbook module, but that’s it.

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:33:00 +0000

A lot of experimenting, but... I tech edited a book called Excel 2007 VBA by Green, Bullen, Bovey, and Alexander. I had just submitted the final chapters and was feeling pretty good. The Wrox guy emailed me and said something like "Looks great. We only have to edit Appendix A and we'll be done. It's about 300 pages." I emailed him back and said that he must have had a typo in his email, but that a 30 page appendix would be no problem.

There was no typo. Appendix A is entitled "Excel 2007 Object Model". In its 329 pages, there is an entry for every object, collection object, property, method, and event in Excel's object model, including examples for many of them. I had just edited ~600 pages and I was only 2/3 done. But I learned a lot about the OM. Did I say a lot? I meant a f**k load.

The Application object started on page 642 and ended on 664. The Range object: 852-867.

Here are a few objects that you've probably never used: AutoCorrect object, CubeField object, SmartTag object, Treeview Control object, XMLSchema object.

That's my sob story. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Re Reserved Names: When the text in the VBE turns red, that's how I know I can't use that word. But I've found for properties of custom objects, that it doesn't complain very often.

By: Doug Glancy

Doug Glancy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:34:00 +0000

Dick, I’m curious how you learned so much about the behind-the-scenes of Excel’s object model. Having read you excellent posts I’d love to read more, especially if it’s as clear as this. Do you have any recommendations?
Also, I learned early on not to use Excel reserved words for variable names, but have wondered if the same applied to class properties. Reading this the answer looks like “no.” I’m curious when exactly the reserved name restriction applies.