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MsgBox function

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Displays a message in a dialog box, waits for the user to click a button, and returns an Integer indicating which button the user clicked.

Note

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Syntax

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

The MsgBox function syntax has these named arguments:

Part Description
prompt Required. String expression displayed as the message in the dialog box. The maximum length of prompt is approximately 1024 characters, depending on the width of the characters used. If prompt consists of more than one line, you can separate the lines by using a carriage return character (Chr(13)), a linefeed character (Chr(10)), or carriage return - linefeed character combination (Chr(13) & Chr(10)) between each line.
buttons Optional. Numeric expression that is the combination of values specifying the number and type of buttons to display, the icon style to use, the identity of the default button, and the modality of the message box. If omitted, the default value for buttons is 0.
title Optional. String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If you omit title, the application name is placed in the title bar.
helpfile Optional. String expression that identifies the Help file to use to provide context-sensitive Help for the dialog box. If helpfile is provided, context must also be provided.
context Optional. Numeric expression that is the Help context number assigned to the appropriate Help topic by the Help author. If context is provided, helpfile must also be provided.

Settings

The buttons argument settings are:

Constant Value Description
vbOKOnly 0 Display OK button only.
vbOKCancel 1 Display OK and Cancel buttons.
vbAbortRetryIgnore 2 Display Abort, Retry, and Ignore buttons.
vbYesNoCancel 3 Display Yes, No, and Cancel buttons.
vbYesNo 4 Display Yes and No buttons.
vbRetryCancel 5 Display Retry and Cancel buttons.
vbCritical 16 Display Critical Message icon.
vbQuestion 32 Display Warning Query icon.
vbExclamation 48 Display Warning Message icon.
vbInformation 64 Display Information Message icon.
vbDefaultButton1 0 First button is default.
vbDefaultButton2 256 Second button is default.
vbDefaultButton3 512 Third button is default.
vbDefaultButton4 768 Fourth button is default.
vbApplicationModal 0 Application modal; the user must respond to the message box before continuing work in the current application.
vbSystemModal 4096 System modal; all applications are suspended until the user responds to the message box.
vbMsgBoxHelpButton 16384 Adds Help button to the message box.
vbMsgBoxSetForeground 65536 Specifies the message box window as the foreground window.
vbMsgBoxRight 524288 Text is right-aligned.
vbMsgBoxRtlReading 1048576 Specifies text should appear as right-to-left reading on Hebrew and Arabic systems.

The first group of values (0-5) describes the number and type of buttons displayed in the dialog box; the second group (16, 32, 48, 64) describes the icon style; the third group (0, 256, 512) determines which button is the default; and the fourth group (0, 4096) determines the modality of the message box. When combining numbers to create a final value for the buttons argument, use only one number from each group.

Note

These constants are specified by Visual Basic for Applications in the VbMsgBoxStyle enumeration. As a result, the names can be used anywhere in your code in place of the actual values.

Return values

The return values are defined in the VbMsgBoxResult enumeration.

Constant Value Description
vbOK 1 OK
vbCancel 2 Cancel
vbAbort 3 Abort
vbRetry 4 Retry
vbIgnore 5 Ignore
vbYes 6 Yes
vbNo 7 No

Remarks

When both helpfile and context are provided, the user can press F1 (Windows) or HELP (Macintosh) to view the Help topic corresponding to the context. Some host applications, for example, Microsoft Excel, also automatically add a Help button to the dialog box.

If the dialog box displays a Cancel button, pressing the ESC key has the same effect as clicking Cancel. If the dialog box contains a Help button, context-sensitive Help is provided for the dialog box. However, no value is returned until one of the other buttons is clicked.

Note

To specify more than the first named argument, you must use MsgBox in an expression. To omit some positional arguments, you must include the corresponding comma delimiter.

Example

This example uses the MsgBox function to display a critical-error message in a dialog box with Yes and No buttons. The No button is specified as the default response. The value returned by the MsgBox function depends on the button chosen by the user. This example assumes that DEMO.HLP is a Help file that contains a topic with a Help context number equal to 1000.

Dim Msg, Style, Title, Help, Ctxt, Response, MyString
Msg = "Do you want to continue ?"    ' Define message.
Style = vbYesNo Or vbCritical Or vbDefaultButton2    ' Define buttons.
Title = "MsgBox Demonstration"    ' Define title.
Help = "DEMO.HLP"    ' Define Help file.
Ctxt = 1000    ' Define topic context. 
        ' Display message.
Response = MsgBox(Msg, Style, Title, Help, Ctxt)
If Response = vbYes Then    ' User chose Yes.
    MyString = "Yes"    ' Perform some action.
Else    ' User chose No.
    MyString = "No"    ' Perform some action.
End If

See also

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