Continuing Macro Lines

When you are creating a VBA macro, you may run into some very long lines. The VBA Editor will handle long lines, but it is usually a pain to scroll the screen left and right to review a line. Some programming languages (Such as C or Perl) allow you to continue program lines simply by pressing ENTER and continuing with the line.

VBA, however, requires a special character sequence to signify that you want to continue the current program line on the next. This sequence consists of a space and an underscore. Consider the following example code:

With Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops
    .ClearAll
    .Add Position:=InchesToPoints(Val(MyTab)), _
        Alignment:=wdAlignTabDecimal, _
        Leader:=wdTabLeaderSpaces
End With

This code continues a program line over three physical lines by using the space and underscore at the end of each line being continued. You can use the continuation characters to continue any programming lines you desire. The only thing you need to remember is that you can only use the characters for continuation purposes if you place them between regular tokens or keywords used in the program line. If you place them in the middle of a keyword or in a string (between quote marks), VBA won't know what you intended, and may generate an error.