VBA Message Box

What is a Message Box?

The MsgBox function displays a message box and waits for the user to click a button and then an action is performed based on the button clicked by the user.

Syntax

MsgBox(prompt[,buttons][,title][,helpfile,context])

Parameter Description

• Prompt - A Required Parameter. A String that is displayed as a message in the dialog box. The maximum length of prompt is approximately 1024 characters. If the message extends to more than a line, then we can separate the lines using a carriage return character (Chr(13)) or a linefeed character (Chr(10)) between each line.
• buttons - An Optional Parameter. A Numeric expression that specifies the type of buttons to display, the icon style to use, the identity of the default button, and the modality of the message box. If left blank, the default value for buttons is 0.
• Title - An Optional Parameter. A String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If the title is left blank, the application name is placed in the title bar.
• helpfile - An Optional Parameter. A String expression that identifies the Help file to use to provide context-sensitive help for the dialog box.
• context - An Optional Parameter. A Numeric expression that identifies the Help context number assigned by the Help author to the appropriate Help topic. If context is provided, helpfile must also be provided.

The Buttons parameter can take any of the following values:

• 0 vbOKOnly Displays OK button only.
• 1 vbOKCancel Displays OK and Cancel buttons.
• 2 vbAbortRetryIgnore Displays Abort, Retry, and Ignore buttons.
• 3 vbYesNoCancel Displays Yes, No, and Cancel buttons.
• 4 vbYesNo Displays Yes and No buttons.
• 5 vbRetryCancel Displays Retry and Cancel buttons.
• 16 vbCritical Displays Critical Message icon.
• 32 vbQuestion Displays Warning Query icon.
• 48 vbExclamation Displays Warning Message icon.
• 64 vbInformation Displays Information Message icon.
• 0 vbDefaultButton1 First button is default.
• 256 vbDefaultButton2 Second button is default.
• 512 vbDefaultButton3 Third button is default.
• 768 vbDefaultButton4 Fourth button is default.
• 0 vbApplicationModal Application modal. The current application will not work until the user responds to the message box.
• 4096 vbSystemModal System modal. All applications will not work until the user responds to the message box.

The above values are logically divided into four groups: The first group(0 to 5) indicates the buttons to be displayed in the message box. The second group (16, 32, 48, 64) describes the sytle of the icon to be displayed, the third group (0, 256, 512, 768) indicates which button must be the default, and the fourth group (0, 4096) determines the modality of the message box.

Return Values

The MsgBox function can return one of the following values using which we will be able to identify the button the user has clicked in the message box.

• 1 - vbOK - OK was clicked
• 2 - vbCancel - Cancel was clicked
• 3 - vbAbort - Abort was clicked
• 4 - vbRetry - Retry was clicked
• 5 - vbIgnore - Ignore was clicked
• 6 - vbYes - Yes was clicked
• 7 - vbNo - No was clicked

Example

   
Function MessageBox_Demo()
  'Message Box with just prompt message
  MsgBox("Welcome")    
  
  'Message Box with title, yes no and cancel Butttons 
  a = MsgBox("Do you like blue color?",3,"Choose options")
  ' Assume that you press No Button 
  msgbox ("The Value of a is " & a)
End Function

Output

1. The above Function can be executed either by clicking "Run" Button on VBA Window or by calling the function from Excel Worksheet as shown below.

2. A Simple Message box is displayed with a message "Welcome" and an "OK" Button

3. After Clicking OK, yet another dialog box is displayed with a message and "yes, no, and cancel" buttons.

4. After Clicking No button the value of that button(7) is stored as an integer and displayed as a message box to the user as shown below. Using this value we will be able to know which button user has clicked..

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