XL: How to Continue a VB Statement from one Line to the Next

ID: Q141513

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 5.0, 5.0c
Microsoft Excel for Windows NT, version 5.0
Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh, versions 5.0, 5.0a
Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0a
Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition

SUMMARY

To make Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications procedures easier to read, you may want to continue a line of code from one line to the next. To write code this way, use the line-continuation character.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about the support options available from Microsoft, please see the following page on the World Wide Web:

   http://www.microsoft.com/support/supportnet/refguide/

To continue a statement from one line to the next, type a space followed by the line-continuation character [the underscore character on your keyboard (_)]. In Microsoft Excel 5.0 and 7.0, you are limited to ten lines for continuation (that is, nine line-continuation characters). In Microsoft Excel 97 and Microsoft Excel 98, this limit is increased to 21 line- continuation characters. You can break a line at an operator, list separator, or period, as shown in the following statement:

   Workbooks("MyBook.xls").Worksheets("Sheet1") _
      .Range("A1:B5").Value = _
      var1 + 3.14159

You cannot break statements in the middle of a keyword value or a text string. If you are using a long text string and need to continue the line, you can break the string into two strings and use a combination of the concatenation operator (&) and the line-continuation character, as shown in the following example:

   var1 = "This is a long string that we are going to break"
   MsgBox var1

   var1 = "This is a long string th" & _
      "at we are going to break"
   MsgBox var1

Additional query words: 5.00 7.00 XL97 XL98 XL7 XL5

Keywords          : kbprg kbdta kbdtacode PgmHowto KbVBA 
Version           : WINDOWS:5.0,7.0,97; MACINTOSH:5.0,98
Platform          : MACINTOSH WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: May 17, 1999