How can one disable autoformatting in Excel's VBA editor? - excel

Question

The single most annoying feature in Excel's built-in VBA editor is—in my opinion—the aggressive autoformatting of the code, which insists on rewriting what I have typed as soon as the cursor leaves the line. It is particularly distressing that the editor collapses all whitespace, thus preventing any meaningful code alignment. For example, if I try to align a sequence of assignments by the equals sign with values aligned by the decimal separator:
price = 10.01
quantity = 3.2
vat = 0.11
the editor inevitably scrambles it by collapsing all spaces:
price = 10.01
quantity = 3.2
vat = 0.11
Is there any way to avoid this kind unwelcome autoformatting?

Answer 1

Assignment cosmetics :-)
There's neither a special VBE property to change the VBE (autoformatting) options directly nor a way to do it programatically. - So afaik VBE irrevocably forces autoformatting upon the user by partial workarounds.
a) Class method
For the sake of the art and just for fun an actually (very) basic class approach to give you a starting idea; assignment arguments are passed as strings allowing any optical formatting - if that's what you really want:
Example call in current module
Sub ExampleCall()
Dim x As New cVars
x.Add "price = 11.11" ' wrong assignment
'...
x.Add "price = 10.01" ' later correction
x.Add "quantity = 1241.01"
x.Add "vat = 0.11"
Debug.Print "The price is $ " & x.Value("price")
End Sub
Class module cVars
Option Explicit
Private dict As Object
Sub Add(ByVal NewValue As Variant)
'split string tokens via equal sign
Dim tmp
tmp = Split(Replace(Replace(NewValue, vbTab, ""), " ", "") & "=", "=")
'Identify key and value item
Dim myKey As String, myVal
myKey = tmp(0)
myVal = tmp(1): If IsNumeric(myVal) Then myVal = Val(myVal)
'Add to dictionary
If dict.exists(myKey) Then
dict(myKey) = myVal
Else
dict.Add myKey, myVal
End If
'Debug.Print "dict(" & myKey & ") =" & dict(myKey)
End Sub
Public Property Get Value(ByVal myVarName As String) As Variant
'get variable value
Value = dict(myVarName)
End Property
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
'set (late bound) dict to memory
If dict Is Nothing Then Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
End Sub
Private Sub Class_Terminate()
Set dict = Nothing
End Sub
Edit #1 as of 3/3 2021
b) Rem Evaluation method
Once again only for the sake of the art a way to read assignments entered into outcommented code lines via, yes via Rem (heaving a deep sigh for this archaic use originating from former Basic times) as it allows to format data with any wanted spaces or tabs and won't be mixed up hopefully with current outcommentings via apostrophe '.
This Test procedure only needs the usual declarations plus some assignment calls as well as the mentioned Rem part. Two simple help procedures get code lines, analyze them via a dictionary class cVars and eventually assign them.
Note that the following example
needs a library reference to Microsoft Visual Basic Extensibility 5.3 and
uses the unchanged class cVars of section a) simply to avoid rewriting it.
Option Explicit
Private Const THISMODULE As String = "Module1" ' << change to current code module name
Sub Test() ' procedure name of example call
'Declare vars
Dim price As Double: Assign "price", price
Dim quantity As Double: Assign "quantity", quantity
Dim vat As Double: Assign "vat", vat
'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Enter assignments via Rem(ark)
'(allowing any user defined formatting therein)
'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rem price = 10.01
Rem quantity = 1241.01
Rem vat = 0.11
'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Debug.Print quantity & " à $" & price & " = " & Format(quantity * price, "$#,##0.00")
End Sub
Help procedure Assign evaluating Rem codelines in procedure Test
Sub Assign(ByVal myVarName As String, ByRef myvar)
Const MyProc As String = "Test"
Dim codelines
getCodelines codelines, THISMODULE, ProcedureName:=MyProc
'Debug.Print Join(codelines, vbNewLine)
Dim x As New cVars ' set class instance to memory
Dim line As Variant, curAssignment
For Each line In codelines
curAssignment = Split(line, "Rem ")(1) ' remove Rem prefix from codelines
If curAssignment Like myVarName & "*" Then
x.Add curAssignment
myvar = x.Value(myVarName)
End If
Next
End Sub
Help procedure getCodelines
Called by above proc Assign. Returns the relevant Rem Codelines from the calling procedure Test. - Of course it would have been possible to filter only one codeline.
Sub getCodelines(ByRef arr, ByVal ModuleName As String, ByVal ProcedureName As String)
Const SEARCH As String = "Rem "
'a) set project
Dim VBProj As Object
Set VBProj = ThisWorkbook.VBProject
If VBProj.Protection = vbext_pp_locked Then Exit Sub ' escape locked projects
'b) set component
Dim VBComp As Object
Set VBComp = VBProj.VBComponents(ModuleName)
Dim pk As vbext_ProcKind
'd) get relevant code lines
With VBComp.CodeModule
'count procedure header lines
Dim HeaderCount As Long: HeaderCount = .ProcBodyLine(ProcedureName, pk) - .ProcStartLine(ProcedureName, pk)
'get procedure code
Dim codelines
codelines = Split(.lines(.ProcBodyLine(ProcedureName, pk), .ProcCountLines(ProcedureName, pk) - HeaderCount), vbNewLine)
'filter code lines containing "Rem" entries
codelines = Filter(codelines, SEARCH, True)
End With
'return elements
arr = codelines
End Sub
Don't forget to integrate the class module CVars from section a)!