Declare and Initialize String Array in VBA

Question

This should work according to another stack overflow post but its not:

Dim arrWsNames As String() = {"Value1", "Value2"}

Can anyone let me know what is wrong?

Answer 1

Try this:

' Variant array    
Dim myVariantArray As Variant
myVariantArray = Array("Cat", "Dog", "Rabbit")

' String array
Dim myStringArray() As String
myStringArray = Split("Cat,Dog,Rabbit", ",")

Answer 2

In the specific case of a String array you could initialize the array using the Split Function as it returns a String array rather than a Variant array:

Dim arrWsNames() As String
arrWsNames = Split("Value1,Value2,Value3", ",")

This allows you to avoid using the Variant data type and preserve the desired type for arrWsNames.

Answer 3

The problem here is that the length of your array is undefined, and this confuses VBA if the array is explicitly defined as a string. Variants, however, seem to be able to resize as needed (because they hog a bunch of memory, and people generally avoid them for a bunch of reasons).

The following code works just fine, but it's a bit manual compared to some of the other languages out there:

Dim SomeArray(3) As String

SomeArray(0) = "Zero"
SomeArray(1) = "One"
SomeArray(2) = "Two"
SomeArray(3) = "Three"

Answer 4

Dim myStringArray() As String
*code*
redim myStringArray(size_of_your_array)

Then you can do something static like this:

myStringArray = { item_1, item_2, ... }

Or something iterative like this:

Dim x
For x = 0 To size_of_your_array
    myStringArray(x) = data_source(x).Name
Next x

Answer 5

Public Function _
CreateTextArrayFromSourceTexts(ParamArray SourceTexts() As Variant) As String()

    ReDim TargetTextArray(0 To UBound(SourceTexts)) As String
    
    For SourceTextsCellNumber = 0 To UBound(SourceTexts)
        TargetTextArray(SourceTextsCellNumber) = SourceTexts(SourceTextsCellNumber)
    Next SourceTextsCellNumber

    CreateTextArrayFromSourceTexts = TargetTextArray
End Function

Example:

Dim TT() As String
TT = CreateTextArrayFromSourceTexts("hi", "bye", "hi", "bcd", "bYe")

Result:

TT(0)="hi"
TT(1)="bye"
TT(2)="hi"
TT(3)="bcd"
TT(4)="bYe"

Enjoy!

Edit: I removed the duplicatedtexts deleting feature and made the code smaller and easier to use.

Answer 6

An only-what's-needed function that works just like array() but gives a string type. You have to first dim the array as string, as shown below:

Sub UseStringArray()

    Dim sample() As String
    sample = StringArray("dog", "cat", "horse")

End Sub

Function StringArray(ParamArray ArgList())

    ReDim tempArray(UBound(ArgList)) As String
    For i = 0 To UBound(ArgList)
        tempArray(i) = ArgList(i)
    Next
    StringArray = tempArray

End Function

For more on converting array types see here: How transform Variant to Double format and vice versa in VBA

Answer 7

A Functional Approach

Using the same solution as @matan_justme and @mark_e, I think the structure can be cleaned up a bit.

Just as the built in function Array we can build our own custom function that uses a ParamArray to accept an array of items as the argument, and return a String Array.

By default, when assigning values to a String Array it will implicitly convert any non-String values into a String.

Public Function StringArray(ParamArray values() As Variant) As String()
    Dim temp() As String
    ReDim temp(LBound(values) To UBound(values))

    Dim index As Long
    For index = LBound(temp) To UBound(temp)
        temp(index) = values(index)
    Next
    StringArray = temp
End Function

Reusability of this structure

The nice thing with this structure is that it can be applied to different data types with intuitive naming conventions. For instance, if we need an Array with Long values, we simply need to change every instance where String is located.

Public Function LongArray(ParamArray values() As Variant) As Long()
    Dim temp() As Long
    ReDim temp(LBound(values) To UBound(values))

    Dim index As Long
    For index = LBound(temp) To UBound(temp)
        temp(index) = values(index)
    Next
    LongArray = temp
End Function

Other Data Type examples could include:

• Single
• Double
• Date

The beauty is an error will be thrown when a value is not the correct data type and it can not be converted over, you will receive a Run-time error '13': Type mismatch error.

Answer 8

Using

Dim myarray As Variant

works but

Dim myarray As String

doesn't so I sitck to Variant