Inspecting Code and Data in the Immediate Pane

When you're creating and testing Visual Basic code, you may often want to check the results of an expression, the value of a property, and so on. You can do this in the Immediate pane of the Debug window. The Immediate pane is a kind of "scratch pad" window in which expressions are evaluated immediately.

To view the Immediate pane

1. Enter break mode, or click Debug Window on the View menu. The Debug window appears.

2. If the Immediate pane isn't on top, click the Immediate tab.

There are several uses for the Immediate pane: checking the values of properties; evaluating expressions; printing the results of expressions; and printing the values of properties. You can also test your Sub and Function procedures by calling them from the Immediate pane. And when you're in break mode, you can use the Immediate pane to examine the values of variables and arguments in a procedure.