Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Offering Options in a Macro.

Offering Options in a Macro

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated November 2, 2017)

2

If you are just starting out developing macros, you may be looking for a simple way to offer a set of choices to a user, and then take an action based on the user's response. This is a relatively simple task, if you use the InputBox function along with a Select Case structure. The first task is to set up your InputBox so it displays the information to the user. For example, let's say you have five options and you want the user to select one option from those five. You can use the following code to put together five options, each on their own line: 
Prompt = "1. This is your first choice" + vbCrLf
Prompt = Prompt + "2. This is your second choice" + vbCrLf
Prompt = Prompt + "3. This is your third choice" + vbCrLf
Prompt = Prompt + "4. This is your fourth choice" + vbCrLf
Prompt = Prompt + "5. This is your fifth choice"
You can now use the Prompt string when you invoke the InputBox function in your macro. You then translate what the user responds with into a number that represents their choice from your five options. The code to do this is as follows: 
UserResp = InputBox(Prompt, "The Big Question")
UR = Val(UserResp)
In this example, the response from the InputBox function is assigned to the UserResp variable, which should be a string. The UR variable, which is a numeric, is then set based on the value of the string. (The Val function returns the value in a string.) The only thing left to do is to take an action based on which number was chosen, 1 through 5. You can use the Select Case structure to do this. The full subroutine could appear as follows: 
Sub Macro1()
    Dim Prompt As String
    Dim UserResp As String
    Dim UR As Single

    Prompt = "1. This is your first choice" + vbCrLf
    Prompt = Prompt + "2. This is your second choice" + vbCrLf
    Prompt = Prompt + "3. This is your third choice" + vbCrLf
    Prompt = Prompt + "4. This is your fourth choice" + vbCrLf
    Prompt = Prompt + "5. This is your fifth choice"
    UR = 0
    While UR < 1 Or UR > 5
        UserResp = InputBox(Prompt, "The Big Question")
        UR = Val(UserResp)
    Wend
    Select Case UR
        Case 1
            'Do stuff for choice 1 here
        Case 2
            'Do stuff for choice 2 here
        Case 3
            'Do stuff for choice 3 here
        Case 4
            'Do stuff for choice 4 here
        Case 5
            'Do stuff for choice 5 here
    End Select
End Sub
Notice that this example uses a While ... Wend loop around the InputBox function. This is done to make sure that the user enters a number between 1 and 5. If the value entered is outside that range, then the user is simply asked again.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11059) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Offering Options in a Macro.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He  is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is five more than 8?

2017-11-06 10:33:11

Dave Bonin

Interesting... I had not seen the "+" plus character used as a concatenation operator in VBA.

I've always used "&" ampersand character for concatenation.

I did see a caution in the VBA Help, "When you use the + operator, you may not be able to determine whether addition or string concatenation will occur. Use the & operator for concatenation to eliminate ambiguity and provide self-documenting code."

It gets a little more complicated if one or both expressions between "+" signs is not a string. You might not always get what you want,

2017-05-01 23:26:15

Troy

Thanks Allen,
I am a long-time Excel user but never jumped into VBA much after having lots of errors that I couldn't debug some years ago. I have some basic macros for saving files and copying and refreshing different pivots, but I now want to make a user form for some employees to enter some order data. This would have a couple dependencies and options. Is there a way to practice this feature or to get a template to use.

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