Excel VBA: Inserting a Symbol

Hi Rgonzo1971,

Thanks for that. It does indeed do what I want -HOWEVER; it only shows the dialog, it doesn't allow me to return a character.

Is there anything less cryptic than 'CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=308)' ? Say for example of the style 'strTest = Application.insertSymbol'.

Sorry afaik it's not possible

Seems strange that you can't return a character from below command - even if its not very pleasing to the eye !

Sub show_symbol_dlg()
Application.CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=308).Execute
End Sub

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No because it's like a sendkeys it just says open it

Indeed. I want to add that 'insert this character' functionality into my VBA solution.

Is there any way to call the Windows Accessory 'Character map' to allow the selection of a character ?

Obviously this would have to be returned to VBA for inclusion.

Well, easy enough to launch that, just RUN "%windir%\system32\charmap.exe".

And wait for it to end.

The only problem with it is that the user has to decide to do the COPY button while there, so that when it returns you can get the character out of the clipboard.  I don't think there is anyway to know if they did the COPY, to know if the clipboard is the symbol(s), or leftovers from a prior copy.

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»bp

What's your application / use case, perhaps building your own small form to do this would end up being easier and more friendly.  Either of these dialogs are somewhat busy and you can change characters sets etc, which could change the effect unless you are using that info as well...

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»bp

Bill: the tool is basically a text editor and I want the user to be able to insert accented symbols and or bullet points. That is why I ideally want to the use the Excel 'Insert symbol' - especially as there is a 'recently used' list of characters

If you are in Word, you can use

application.Dialogs(wdDialogInsertSymbol).Show

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Where wdDialogInsertSymbol = 162

With that in mind, you should be able to instantiate a word.automation object and use a statement like this to display the dialog.

Although the dialog shows in Excel with this command, it doesn't seem useful.  You'd need to look at the contents of the current cell after the dialog goes away.

Application.CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=308).Execute

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Ah Ha!  The secret value of the unpublished intrinsic constant in Excel is 771.

Application.Dialogs(771).Show

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it does not yet solve the problem of getting the character(s) inserted

There are two problems using this dialog in Excel
1. It automatically invokes an edit operation on the activecell.  Code is suspended until the dialog window is closed.
2. Unlike the fileselect dialogs, it doesn't retain a value.

My earlier suggestion, using a Word automation object, should allow you to capture the inserted characters in a non-visible document window.