Visual Basic for Applications Reference

Type Statement

See Also    Example    Specifics

Used at module level to define a user-defined data type containing one or more elements.

Syntax

[Private | Public] Typevarname
elementname [([subscripts])] Astype
[elementname [([subscripts])] Astype]
. . .

End Type

The Type statement syntax has these parts:

Part Description
Public Optional. Used to declare user-defined types that are available to all procedures in all modules in all projects.
Private Optional. Used to declare user-defined types that are available only within the module where the declaration is made.
varname Required. Name of the user-defined type; follows standard variable naming conventions.
elementname Required. Name of an element of the user-defined type. Element names also follow standard variable naming conventions, except that keywords can be used.
subscripts When not explicitly stated in lower, the lower bound of an array is controlled by the OptionBase statement. The lower bound is zero if no OptionBase statement is present.
type Required. Data type of the element; may be Byte, Boolean, Integer, Long, Currency, Single, Double, Decimal(not currently supported), Date, String (for variable-length strings), String * length (for fixed-length strings), Object, Variant, another user-defined type, or an object type.

Remarks

The Type statement can be used only at module level. Once you have declared a user-defined type using the Type statement, you can declare a variable of that type anywhere within the scope of the declaration. Use Dim, Private, Public, ReDim, or Static to declare a variable of a user-defined type.

In standard modules and class modules, user-defined types are public by default. This visibility can be changed using the Private keyword.

Line numbers and line labels aren't allowed in Type...End Type blocks.

User-defined types are often used with data records, which frequently consist of a number of related elements of different data types.

The following example shows the use of fixed-size arrays in a user-defined type:

Type StateData
   CityCode (1 To 100) As Integer   ' Declare a static array.
   County As String * 30
End Type

Dim Washington(1 To 100) As StateData

In the preceding example, StateData includes the CityCode static array, and the record Washington has the same structure as StateData.

When you declare a fixed-size array within a user-defined type, its dimensions must be declared with numeric literals or constants rather than variables.