InputBox

Displays a prompt in a dialog, waits for the user to type text or click a button, and returns a String containing the contents of the text box.

Syntax: InputBox( prompt [ , title ] [ , default ] [ , xpos ] [ , ypos ] [ , helpfile , context ] )

prompt: required 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. To break prompt across multiple lines, separate the lines with a carriage return (Chr(13)), a linefeed (Chr(10)), or a CR-LF combination (vbCrLf).
title: optional String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If omitted, the application name is used.
default: optional String expression displayed in the text box as the initial response. If omitted, the text box is displayed empty.
xpos: optional Numeric expression specifying, in twips, the horizontal distance of the left edge of the dialog from the left edge of the screen. If omitted, the dialog is horizontally centered.
ypos: optional Numeric expression specifying, in twips, the vertical distance of the top edge of the dialog from the top of the screen. If omitted, the dialog is positioned approximately one-third of the way down the screen.
helpfile: optional String expression that identifies the Help file to use to provide context-sensitive Help for the dialog box. If helpfile is supplied, context must also be supplied.
context: optional Numeric expression giving the Help context number assigned to the relevant Help topic. If context is supplied, helpfile must also be supplied.

If the user clicks OK or presses ENTER, InputBox returns whatever is in the text box. If the user clicks Cancel, the function returns a zero-length string ("").

Note

A zero-length return value alone cannot distinguish “user cancelled” from “user submitted an empty string”. To tell them apart, capture the result in a Variant and test the underlying BSTR pointer with StrPtr: a cancelled dialog returns a null pointer, while an empty submitted string returns a pointer to an allocated zero-length BSTR.

Dim Reply As Variant
Reply = InputBox("Enter your name:")
If StrPtr(Reply) = 0 Then
' User cancelled.
ElseIf Reply = "" Then
' User submitted an empty string.
Else
' User entered: Reply.
End If

The text box accepts at most 255 characters; the returned string is truncated to 254 characters. The text box does not accept line breaks (e.g. SHIFT+ENTER); pasted text containing a line break is truncated at the break.

When both helpfile and context are supplied, the user can press F1 to view the relevant Help topic.

Example

This example shows several ways of calling InputBox. If xpos and ypos are omitted the dialog is centered on its respective axis. The variable MyValue ends up containing whatever the user typed when OK or ENTER was pressed, or a zero-length string when Cancel was pressed.

Dim Message As String, Title As String, Default As String, MyValue As String
Message = "Enter a value between 1 and 3"
Title = "InputBox Demo"
Default = "1"

' Display message, title, and default value.
MyValue = InputBox(Message, Title, Default)

' Use a Help file and context. The Help button is added automatically.
MyValue = InputBox(Message, Title, , , , "DEMO.HLP", 10)

' Display the dialog at screen position (100, 100).
MyValue = InputBox(Message, Title, Default, 100, 100)

InputBox

Example

See Also