VBA Msgbox - A Complete Guide To The VBA Message Box

The VBA MsgBox function is used to display messages to the user in the form of a message box.

We can configure the message box to provide the user with a number of different buttons such as Yes, No, Ok, Retry, Abort, Ignore and Cancel. The MsgBox function will then return the button that was clicked.

Contents

• 1 Related Links
• 2 Basic VBA MsgBox Examples
• 3 VBA MsgBox Parameters
  • 3.1 VBA MsgBox Return Values
  • 3.2 VBA MsgBox Yes No
• 4 VBA MsgBox Button Constants
• 5 VBA MsgBox Examples
• 6 What’s Next?

Related Links

VBA Userforms

Basic VBA MsgBox Examples

In most cases, you will use MsgBox to simply display a message or to ask the user to click Yes/No or Ok/Cancel. The following code shows how to display a simple message box:

' https://excelmacromastery.com/ Sub BasicMessageBox() ' Basic message MsgBox "There is no data on this worksheet " ' Basic message with "Error" as the title MsgBox "There is no data on this worksheet ", , "Error" End Sub

VBA MsgBox Parameters

The parameters of the message box are as follows:

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

prompt – This is the message text that will be displayed.

buttons[optional] – This parameter does many things including setting the buttons, icons, select button, modal type etc. If this parameter is not used a message box with the Ok button and no icon is displayed. See the next section for more about this parameter.

title[optional] – this is the title that will appear at the top of the message box. The default is “Microsoft Excel”.

helpfile, context[optional] – These parameters are used to reference a help file and location of specific help text. It is very unlikely you use this unless you are creating an application for a third party and help files are a requirement.

VBA MsgBox Return Values

The following are all the return values for the MsgBox function:

vbOk vbCancel vbAbort vbRetry vbIgnore vbYes vbNo

Each of these values represents a button that was clicked.

VBA MsgBox Yes No

We can use the message box to get a simple response from the user. For example, we can ask the user a question and they can respond by clicking on the Yes or No button. The return value from the MsgBox function tells us which button was clicked.

If we want to get a Yes/No response from the user we can do it with the following code:

' https://excelmacromastery.com/ Sub MessagesYesNoWithResponse() ' Display a messagebox based on the response If MsgBox("Do you wish to continue? ", vbYesNo) = vbYes Then MsgBox "The user clicked Yes" Else MsgBox "The user clicked No" End If End Sub

Note: When we return a value from the message box we must use parenthesis around the parameters or we will get the “Expected end of statement” error.

We can also use a variable to store the response from the MsgBox. We would normally do this if we want to use the response more than once. For example, if there were three buttons:

' https://excelmacromastery.com/ Sub Msgbox_AbortRetryIgnore() Dim resp As VbMsgBoxResult ' Store MsgBox response in a variable resp = MsgBox("Do you wish to continue? ", vbAbortRetryIgnore) ' Display Ok/Cancel buttons and get response If resp = vbAbort Then MsgBox "The user clicked Abort" ElseIf resp = vbRetry Then MsgBox "The user clicked Retry" ElseIf resp = vbIgnore Then MsgBox "The user clicked Ignore" End If End Sub

VBA MsgBox Button Constants

The button parameter of MsgBox allows us to configure the message box in many ways. The table below shows the different options:

Constant	Group	Type	Description
vbOKOnly	1	Buttons	Ok button.
vbOKCancel	1	Buttons	Ok and cancel buttons.
vbAbortRetryIgnore	1	Buttons	Abort, Retry and Ignore buttons.
vbYesNoCancel	1	Buttons	Yes, No and Cancel buttons.
vbYesNo	1	Buttons	Yes and No buttons.
vbRetryCancel	1	Buttons	Retry and Cancel buttons.
vbCritical	2	Icon	Critical Message icon.
vbQuestion	2	Icon	Question mark icon.
vbExclamation	2	Icon	Warning Message icon.
vbInformation	2	Icon	Information Message icon.
vbDefaultButton1	3	Default button	Set button 1 to be selected.
vbDefaultButton2	3	Default button	Set button 2 to be selected.
vbDefaultButton3	3	Default button	Set button 3 to be selected.
vbDefaultButton4	3	Default button	Set button 4 to be selected. Note that there will only be four buttons if the help button is included with vbAbortRetryIgnore or vbYesNoCancel.
vbApplicationModal	4	Modal	Cannot access Excel while the button is displayed. Msgbox is only displayed when Excel is the active application.
vbSystemModal	4	Modal	Same as vbApplicationModal but the message box is displayed in front of all applications.
vbMsgBoxHelpButton	5	Other	Adds a help button
vbMsgBoxSetForeground	5	Other	Sets the message box windows to be the foreground window
vbMsgBoxRight	5	Other	Right aligns the text.
vbMsgBoxRtlReading	5	Other	Specifies text should appear as right-to-left reading on Hebrew and Arabic systems.

These constants work as follows:

1. The constants in group 1 are used to select the buttons.
2. The constants in group 2 are used to select icons.
3. The constants in group 3 are used to select which button is highlighted when the message box appears.
4. The constants in group 4 are used to set the modal type of the message box.
5. The constants in group 5 are used for various settings.

When we use MsgBox, we can combine items from each group by using the plus sign. For example:

MsgBox "Example 1" ,vbOkCancel + vbCritical + vbDefaultButton1 + vbApplicationModal

This displays the message box with the Ok and Cancel button, the critical message icon, with the Ok button highlighted and the message box will display only when Excel is the active application.

MsgBox "Example 2", vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbDefaultButton2 + vbSystemModal

This displays the message box with the Yes and No button, the warning query icon, with the No button highlighted and the message box will display in front of all applications.

Important: Each time we use the MsgBox function we can only select one of each:

1. button type
2. icon type
3. default button
4. modal type

In other words, we can only select one item from each of the first 4 groups.

The next section shows some more examples of using the message box.

VBA MsgBox Examples

The following examples show to display the various icons with the Yes and No buttons:

' Yes/No buttons with Critical icon and No button selected resp = MsgBox("Do you wish to continue", vbYesNo + vbCritical) ' Yes/No buttons with Warning Query icon and Yes button selected resp = MsgBox("Do you wish to continue", vbYesNo + vbQuestion) ' Yes/No buttons with Warning Message icon and Yes button selected resp = MsgBox("Do you wish to continue", vbYesNo + vbExclamation) ' Yes/No button with Information Message icon and Cancel button selected resp = MsgBox("Do you wish to continue", vbYesNo + vbInformation)

The following examples show the Abort/Retry/Ignore button plus the help button with different buttons selected:

' Abort/Retry/Ignore button with the Help button displayed and Abort selected resp = MsgBox("Error", vbAbortRetryIgnore + vbDefaultButton1 + vbMsgBoxHelpButton) ' Abort/Retry/Ignore button with the help button displayed and Retry selected resp = MsgBox("Error", vbAbortRetryIgnore + vbDefaultButton2 + vbMsgBoxHelpButton) ' Abort/Retry/Ignore button with the Help button displayed and Ignore selected resp = MsgBox("Error", vbAbortRetryIgnore + vbDefaultButton3 + vbMsgBoxHelpButton) ' Abort/Retry/Ignore button with the Help button displayed and Help selected resp = MsgBox("Error", vbAbortRetryIgnore + vbDefaultButton4 + vbMsgBoxHelpButton)

The following examples show some button selections and the title parameter being set:

' Retry/Cancel button with query warning as the icon and "Error" as the title resp = MsgBox("An error occurred. Try again?", vbRetryCancel + vbQuestion, "Error") ' Ok button with critical icon and "System error" as the title MsgBox "An error occurred", vbCritical, "System Error"

What’s Next?

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