Display a message on the statusbar

If you turn off the screen updating, and your macros takes some time to finish, the user may think that the computer has stopped to respond. Because of this it's a good programming rule to inform the user of the macro progress by displaying a message on the statusbar at the bottom of the screen. Here is an example ::

Sub StatusBarExample()
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False 
    ' turns off screen updating
    Application.DisplayStatusBar = True 
    ' makes sure that the statusbar is visible
    Application.StatusBar = "Please wait while performing task 1..."
    ' add some code for task 1 that replaces the next sentence
    Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:02")
    Application.StatusBar = "Please wait while performing task 2..."
    ' add some code for task 2 that replaces the next sentence
    Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:02")
    Application.StatusBar = False 
    ' gives control of the statusbar back to the programme
End Sub

If you want even more control over the status bar so that you can display a LED progress bar like Excel do, you can find an example here: Excel Files For Devlopers

Document last updated 2002-07-17 12:47:32 Printerfriendly version