Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. 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: Self-Aware Macros.

Self-Aware Macros

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 6, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


6

For some macros you may need to determine if there is a way to determine the particular machine on which the macro is operating. For instance, you may have a desktop PC that has a particular directory at D:\OraNT\Plus33, while your notebook PC has the directory at C:\OraNT\Plus33. The macro, of course, needs to detect which machine is in use so that it knows which directory to use for its processing.

There are different ways that this task can be approached. It is possible to create an Excel macro that actually accesses the Windows API and determines the name of the computer on which it is running. Such an approach can get quite involved, however.

An easier way is to just use VBA's DIR command to determine where the desired directory exists. The following will do the trick:

Sub OracleQueries()
    Dim sTemp As String
    Dim sGoodPath As String

    sGoodPath = "D:\OraNT\Plus33\"
    sTemp = Dir("D:\OraNT\Plus33\nul")
    If sTemp = "" Then
        sGoodPath = "C:\OraNT\Plus33\"
        sTemp = Dir("C:\OraNT\Plus33\nul")
    End If

    'Now have directory information
    If sTemp <> "" Then
        'Process queries using sGoodPath
    Else
        MsgBox "Directories not found!"
    End If
End Sub

Notice how the DIR function is used in this example. Normally DIR returns the name of the first file it finds in the requested directory. If the directory is empty, however, DIR returns an empty string—even if the directory actually exists. Since all we want to do is find out if the directory exists (not if there are files in it), it is necessary to append the letters "nul" at the end of the directory path used by DIR. This causes DIR to return an empty string if the directory is not located, or else the characters "nul" if it is (even if the directory is empty).

Toward the end of the macro, sTemp will be empty if neither directory could be located. If one of them was located, then sTemp will not be empty, and sGoodPath will be set to the directory name that can be used in further processing.

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 (11576) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Self-Aware Macros.

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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Comments

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What is 4 - 4?

2024-11-09 09:36:37

J. Woolley

Re. my most recent comment below, apparently the last formula was bifurcated because backslash-nul became newline-ul. Here is a substitute formula:
=LEN(VBAResult("Dir(""D:\OraNT\Plus33"", vbDirectory)")) > 0


2024-11-08 13:19:56

J. Woolley

My Excel Toolbox includes three functions that can return the value of environment variable COMPUTERNAME:
    =NameOf("COMPUTERNAME")
    =VBAResult("Environ(""COMPUTERNAME"")")
    =VLOOKUP("COMPUTERNAME", ListEnvironVariables(), 2)
Re. the Tip's macro, this formula will return TRUE if D:\OraNT\Plus33 is a valid directory:
    =LEN(VBAResult("Dir(""D:\OraNT\Plus33
ul"")")) > 0
Each function has been previously described in my comments attached to the following Tips:
NameOf, see https://tips.net/T006145#comment-form-hd
VBAResult, see https://tips.net/T008030#comment-form-hd
ListEnvironVariables, see https://tips.net/T013227#comment-form-hd
Also, see https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/


2024-11-06 09:04:41

Alan Cannon

A much simpler macro, or even a UDF, containing these statements works well for me:

Dim Compter As String
Compter = Environ$("COMPUTERNAME")
CompName = Compter

I use it as a UDF but it could be embedded in a macro where needed.


2016-05-09 17:08:13

David A. Gray

Getting the machine name is one among many details obtainable through the Windows API that are so useful that I wrote VBA wrappers around them, and put them into a library add-in, along the lines of the optional library add-ins that ship with Microsoft Excel. To date, I haven't invested the effort to port them to C++, but they work well enough without access to the facilities afforded to add-ins implemented in C++.


2016-05-09 09:23:43

Nick London

Jeff C thanks.

Don't you just hate it when MS adds a functionality that you used native whit and ingenuity to acheive. :-)


2016-05-07 20:31:13

Jeff C

environ("computername")


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