Delaying in a Macro

Chris is developing an Excel macro that displays a series of items to the user. He would like to introduce a delay in the macro of, say, one second between each piece of information he displays, and he wonders if there is an easy way to add such a delay.

There are a few ways you can introduce a delay into your macro. The traditional way is to use the Wait method, which is used with the Application object. You use it to introduce a one-second delay in this manner:

Application.Wait (Now() + TimeValue("0:00:01"))

Note that the parameter required by the Wait method is the time at which you want your macro to resume running. In other words, it is the "wait until" time. That is why the above example uses the current time (from the Now function) incremented by a single second.

If you prefer to not use the Wait method (for whatever reason), you can also just use a loop to bide your time:

Dim WaitTime As Date

WaitTime = Now() + TimeValue("0:00:01")
Do While Now < WaitTime
Loop

A variant on this approach relies on the Timer function, which returns the number of seconds since midnight:

Dim Endpoint as Single

Endpoint = Timer + 1
Do While Timer < Endpoint
Loop

When using a loop in this manner, it probably won't be a big issue if you are delaying for only a second. If you need to delay for a longer time, you'll probably want to place the DoEvents function into the loop:

Dim Endpoint as Single

Endpoint = Timer + 1
Do While Timer < Endpoint
    DoEvents
Loop

The reason is simple—if you don't, then Excel won't respond to any other events while in the loop. This can make it seem like your system has frozen or hung while waiting.

If you need more granularity on your delays (down to the millisecond range), you may want to rely on the Sleep function, which is part of the Windows API. (It is not a part of VBA.) In order to use it, you'll need to include a declaration at the beginning of your module, in the declarations area, before any procedures:

#If VBA7 And Win64 Then
    Public Declare PtrSafe Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32"(ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
#Else
    Public Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32"(ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
#End If

Then, within your macro you can use the Sleep function in this manner:

Sleep(1000)

This pauses the system for 1000 milliseconds, which is 1 second.

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