Updated: March 2009
Displays a message in a dialog box, waits for the user to click a button, and returns a value indicating which button the user clicked.
MsgBox(prompt[, buttons][, title][, helpfile, context])
String expression displayed as the message in the dialog box. The maximum length of prompt is approximately 1024 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 linefeed character (Chr(10)), or carriage return–linefeed character combination (Chr(13) & Chr(10)) between each line.
Numeric expression that is the sum of values specifying 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. See Settings section for values. If omitted, the default value for buttons is 0.
String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If you omit title, the application name is placed in the title bar.
String expression that identifies the Help file to use to provide context-sensitive Help for the dialog box. If helpfile is provided, context must also be provided. Not available on 16-bit platforms.
Numeric expression that identifies the Help context number assigned by the Help author to the appropriate Help topic. If context is provided, helpfile must also be provided. Not available on 16-bit platforms.
The buttons argument settings are:
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
First button is default.
vbDefaultButton2
256
Second button is default.
vbDefaultButton3
512
Third button is default.
vbDefaultButton4
768
Fourth button is default.
vbApplicationModal
Application modal. The user must respond to the message box before continuing work in the current application.
vbSystemModal
4096
System modal. On Microsoft Win16 systems, all applications are suspended until the user responds to the message box. On Microsoft Win32 systems, this constant provides an application modal message box that always remains on top of any other programs that you have running
The first group of values (0–5) 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, 4096) determines the modality of the message box. When adding numbers to create a final value for the argument buttons, use only one number from each group.
The MsgBox function has the following return values:
Button
vbOK
OK
vbCancel
Cancel
vbAbort
Abort
vbRetry
Retry
vbIgnore
Ignore
vbYes
6
Yes
vbNo
7
No
When both helpfile and context are provided, the user can press F1 to view the Help topic corresponding to the context.
If the dialog box displays a Cancel button, pressing the ESC key has the same effect as clicking Cancel. If the dialog box contains a Help button, context-sensitive Help is provided for the dialog box. However, no value is returned until one of the other buttons is clicked.
When the MsgBox function is used with Microsoft Internet Explorer, the title of any dialog presented always contains "VBScript:" to differentiate it from standard system dialogs.
The following example illustrates the use of the MsgBox function.
result = MsgBox ("File Save Error", _ vbAbortRetryIgnore+vbExclamation+vbDefaultButton2, "File Save Error") Dim message Select Case result Case vbAbort message = "You chose Abort" Case vbRetry message = "You chose Retry" Case vbIgnore message = "You chose Ignore" End Select MsgBox message, vbInformation
Version 1
Date
History
Reason
March 2009
Modified example.
Information enhancement.
Added information about the vbSystemModal constant.
Content bug fix.