Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

CHAPTER 4 - USING FILE DIALOG BOXES

4.1

Introduction

You can use the built-in dialog boxes in VBA to ask users to choose files and folders. An
example of a custom dialog box for opening files is shown below:
You can set a custom title
for the dialog box.
You can specify the initial
folder to look in.
You can choose which view
to display the files in.
You can customise the file
filters and choose the one
that should be applied by
default.
You can change the default
text on the action button.

Wise
Wise Owls
Owls
Hint
Hint

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The exact style of the dialog box that you see will depend on which
operating system you are using. The example above is from Windows
Vista.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

4.2

Showing a Simple FileDialog

The easiest and most flexible way to open and save files in VBA is to use the FileDialog
property there are four types of dialog box you can use:
This is by far the easiest
way to open and save
files, and to choose files
and folders.

The four types of dialog box are:

Argument

What it does

msoFileDialogFilePicker

Lets users select one or more files

msoFileDialogFolderPicker

Lets users select a folder path

msoFileDialogOpen

Lets users select one or more files to open

msoFileDialogSaveAs

Lets users select a single file to save

You can display one of the four types of dialog boxes as shown below:

Use one of the four standard

dialog box arguments here we
are choosing to open a file.

Note that having chosen a file

to open we must then open it
with the Execute method.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

4.3

Customising FileDialogs

There are many ways in which you can change how the file dialog boxes appear, as described
under separate headings below.
Choosing an Initial View
You can choose to display your files/folders as icons, thumbnails, etc initially:
Use this property to set the
initial view (see the possible
options below).

The possible options correspond to some of the

standard Windows file list options.

The standard constants are:

ConstantViewmsoFileDialogViewDetailsDetailsmsoFileDi
alogViewLargeIconsLarge
iconsmsoFileDialogViewListListmsoFileDialogViewPrevie
wPreviewmsoFileDialogViewPropertiesPropertiesmsoFile
DialogViewSmallIconsSmall
iconsmsoFileDialogViewThumbnailThumbnailsmsoFileDia
logViewTilesTiled icons

Wise
Wise Owls
Owls
Hint
Hint

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Users of Windows Vista may find that changing the initial view of a file
dialog box has no effect when the code runs.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

Setting Filters
Whenever a dialog box appears for opening files, you can control which files you can look for:
Here we have two filters the first
of which is selected by default.

Each filter has a name, a file extension and a position in the list. for our example, the filters are:
Name of filter

Extension

Position

Wise Owl Files

*.wol

All Files

*.*

The code to display the dialog box above would be:

Normally there are lots of pre-set
Excel file extensions (*.xlsx, etc.)
remove these.

Add in our two filters specifying

the name, extension and position of
each.

The default selected filter should be

the first.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

Specifying a Default Initial Folder

To do this, use (confusingly) the InitialFileName property:
If you set the InitialFileName
property to be a given path

this is what will be selected

initially in your dialog box.

Changing the Appearance of the Dialog Box

You can change the title and button text in any file dialog box:

The title can be

anything you want.

The default button text

can be customised the
& makes the following
letter a short-cut key (so
here + w would open a
file).

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

4.4

Processing the File(s)/Folder(s) Picked

There are two types of file dialog box:

Types of dialog box

Examples

Dialog boxes which do something

msoFileDialogOpen opens a file

msoFileDialogSaveAs - saves a file

Dialog boxes which dont

msoFileDialogFilePicker picks a file

msoFileDialogFolderPicker picks a folder

Despite this apparent difference, you can use the Open and SaveAs dialog boxes to choose a file
or folder just dont apply the Execute method afterwards.
Finding Out which File was Chosen
A file dialog box has a SelectedItems() property, giving an array of the files chosen. Also, when
you apply the Show method you can get back one of two values:
Value

What it means

-1

The user clicked on the default button (Open, Save or whatever)

The user chose Cancel or closed the dialog box without doing anything.

You can put all this information together to find out the file a user chose, as in this example:
This command states that a user will only be able
to select a single file.

If the user
chooses a
single file:

this macro will display

this message:

If the dialog box returns 0, the user chose Cancel

and we see this message.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

Multiple File Selection

You can set a dialog boxs AllowMultiSelect property to True (the default anyway) to allow
users to use the Ctrl and
keys to select (and possibly open) more than one file:

Ensure that the user can select more than

one file.

If the user chose loop over all the items

chosen and display the name of each file
chosen in the immediate window.

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Chapter 4 - Using File Dialog Boxes

4.5

Other Application Dialog Boxes

Application Dialog Boxes

In Word and Excel you can bring up any built-in dialog box using the Dialogs collection:
This code would show the standard
column width dialog box in Excel:

A selection of the dialog boxes that

you can use in Word 2007.

Wise
Wise Owls
Owls
Hint
Hint

For some reason Access and PowerPoint

do not seem to support this feature.

A Special Case for Excel GetOpenFileName

For some reason Excel has a special way to display the Open File dialog box:

Using GetOpenFileName offers no great advantage of using FileDialogs, and

is best avoided so that you can keep compatibility in your VBA code between
Office applications.

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