MsgBox

This function displays a message in a dialog box, waits for a user to choose a button, and returns a value indicating which button the user clicked.

Syntax

MsgBox(prompt, [buttons], [title], [helpfile, context])

Parameters

prompt

String expression displayed as the message in the dialog box. The maximum length of prompt is approximately 1,024 characters, depending on the width of the characters used. If prompt consists of more than one line, you can separate the lines using a carriage return character (Chr(13)), a line feed character (Chr(10)), or carriage return/line feed character combination (Chr(13) & Chr(10)) between each line.

buttons

Numeric expression that is the sum of values that specify the number and type of buttons to display, the icon style to use, the identity of the default button, and the modality of the message box. If omitted, the default value for buttons is 0. The following table shows the settings for the buttons parameter.

Constant	Value	Description
vbOKOnly	0	Display OK button only.
vbOKCancel	1	Display OK and Cancel buttons.
vbAbortRetryIgnore	2	Display Abort, Retry, and Ignore buttons.
vbYesNoCancel	3	Display Yes, No, and Cancel buttons.
vbYesNo	4	Display Yes and No buttons.
vbRetryCancel	5	Display Retry and Cancel buttons.
vbCritical	16	Display Critical Message icon.
vbQuestion	32	Display Warning Query icon.
vbExclamation	48	Display Warning Message icon.
vbInformation	64	Display Information Message icon.
vbDefaultButton1	0	First button is default.
vbDefaultButton2	256	Second button is default.
vbDefaultButton3	512	Third button is default.
vbDefaultButton4	768	Fourth button is default.
vbApplicationModal	0	Application modal; a user must respond to the message box before continuing work in the current application. This is the default.
vbSystemModal	4096	System modal; all applications are suspended until a user responds to the message box. This setting is not supported.

The first group of values (from 0 through 5) describes the number and type of buttons displayed in the dialog box; the second group (16, 32, 48, 64) describes the icon style; the third group (0, 256, 512, 768) determines which button is the default; and the fourth group (0, 4, 096) determines the modality of the message box. When adding numbers to create a final value for the parameter buttons, use only one number from each group.

title

String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If you omit title, the string “Visual Basic” is placed in the title bar.

helpfile

Not supported.

context

Not supported.

Return Values

The following table shows the return values for the MsgBox function.

Remarks

If the dialog box displays a Cancel button, pressing the ESC key has the same effect as choosing Cancel.