What’s My Type?

I am a big advocate of using the Enum construct in VBA, I feel that it is a simple way of adding a set of values, and provides a grouping, abstracting advantage that is not given by simple variables. Plus they can add to intellisense. As such, I should also be a fan of another specialised construct, the Type statement, but it is quite the opposite, I naturally avoid it. This is not
because I think the Type statement is a bad concept, in fact I think the basic idea is great,
but more because of its implementation; whenever I try to use it in anger, it
breaks on me. As such, I tend to avoid it and create classes.

Earlier this week, it occurred to me that there was a case in
which I could implement a Type, an elegant solution, with no chance of it
breaking on me.

We all know that when your masterpiece sets application
variables, such as calculation mode, in its processing, they should be reset at
the end to whatever state the user originally had them. The normal way to do
this is to save them in a bunch of variables at the start of the process, and
restore them at the end.

My solution is very similar, but the benefits of Type add an
elegance that I don’t feel the variables give it.

Here is that solution.

 

Public Type ApplicationValues

    ScreenUpdating As Boolean

    Calculation As XlCalculation

End Type

 

Private AppValues As
ApplicationValues

 

Public Function ObfuscateData()

 

    With Application

   

        AppValues.ScreenUpdating =
.ScreenUpdating

        AppValues.Calculation = .Calculation

       

        .ScreenUpdating = False

        .Calculation = xlCalculationManual

    End With

   

    On Error GoTo func_error

 

… main code

 

func_exit:

    With Application

       

        .ScreenUpdating =
AppValues.ScreenUpdating

        .Calculation = AppValues.Calculation

    End With

 

func_error:

    ‘your error handler

    Resume func_exit

End Function

 

I think this is a neat little approach. Furthermore, it is
simple and extendible, what more can we ask?

This may be obvious to you, it may be the sort of thing that
you do all of the time, but it made me smile after I had implemented it. So
much so that it is now a code snippet in my MZ-Tools, implementable at the drop
(click) of a button.