XL: New Balloon That Contains Picture May Not Be Displayed

ID: Q178177

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition

SYMPTOMS

If you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro that displays a customized Office Assistant balloon, the balloon may not appear on the screen. When this problem occurs, the value of the BalloonError property of the Assistant object is set to 4 (msoBalloonErrorBadPictureRef).

CAUSE

This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:

The Text property of the new balloon has been set to include a picture, as in the following example:

      With Assistant.NewBalloon
          .Text = "{<type> <location> <sizing_factor>}"
          .Show
      End With

   <Type> is either bmp, wmf, or pict, <location> is the path to the
   picture, and <sizing_factor> is an optional value that sets the width of
   the picture.

    -and-

The <location> includes a space, as in the following example:
```
      .Text = "{bmp C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp}"
```

Specifically, the problem occurs because the space in the path causes the file location to be evaluated as "C:\Windows\My", not "C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp". If the picture cannot be found in the specified location, the balloon cannot be displayed, and the BalloonError property is set to 4.

WORKAROUND

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 prevent this problem from occurring, enclose the location of the picture file in a double set of quotation marks, as in the following example:

   With Assistant.NewBalloon
       .Text = "{bmp ""C:\Windows\My Picture.bmp""}"
       .Show
   End With

When you run the macro, the balloon appears correctly, and the value of the BalloonError property is zero (0).

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

REFERENCES

For additional information about getting help with Visual Basic for Applications, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q163435
   TITLE     : VBA: Programming Resources for Visual Basic for
               Applications

Additional query words: XL97 XL98

Keywords          : kbprg kbtool kbdta KbVBA offassist 
Version           : WINDOWS:97; MACINTOSH:98
Platform          : MACINTOSH WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: May 18, 1999