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Creating and Using References in Code

Written by Andy Brown

In this tutorial

Referencing the VBA Extensibility Library
Sample Code to List References
Useful Reference Properties
Adding References Programmatically

It is a little-known fact (well, I keep forgetting it!) that you can create and manage your references within VBA.

You need to make sure that you are comfortable with the earlier parts of this tutorial on referencing other VBA applications before reading any further.

Referencing the VBA Extensibility Library

To work with references from within VBA code, you first need to create a reference (it's all a bit circular!) to the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility library:

Create a reference to the Microsoft VBA Extensibility Library

To do this, select Tools -> References from the VBA code editor menu, and tick the box shown above.

Sample Code to List References

To give you an idea of what's possible, here is a simple program to list out all of the references in the current code project:

Sub ListReferences()

'create a variable to refer to each reference

Dim ref As Reference

'list out all of the current references

For Each ref In Application.VBE.ActiveVBProject.References

Debug.Print ref.Name, ref.Description

Next ref

End Sub

Here VBE refers to the Visual Basic editor within which you are writing code. The program above might show the following output:

The truncated output from the above program in the immediate window.

Useful Reference Properties

A reference object has a fair few properties:

Some of the properties of a reference - the most useful are listed below.

Here are some of the most useful properties:

Property	What it gives	Example
Name	A short description of the reference	stdole
Description	A longer description	OLE Automation
Guid	A unique identifier for the reference	{00020430-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
FullPath	Where the object library is	C:\Windows\system32\stdole2.tlb
IsBroken	Whether the reference is broken	False

Adding References Programmatically

You can use the AddFromGUID or AddFromFile methods to add a new reference. For example:

Sub ListReferences()

'try to add a reference to Word

On Error GoTo CanNotAddWord

Application.VBE.ActiveVBProject.References.AddFromFile "C:\Program Files\Office 2010\Office14\MSWORD.OLB"

Exit Sub

CanNotAddWord:

MsgBox "Can not reference Word"

End Sub

The code above would create a reference to the Word 2010 object library, provided that the relevant object library is in the folder given.

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You can learn more about this topic on the following Wise Owl courses:

Classroom or online Excel VBA macros course

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Tutorials on VBA

Referencing applications

Creating and Using References in Code

Referencing the VBA Extensibility Library

Sample Code to List References

Useful Reference Properties

Adding References Programmatically

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