Is there a global keyword similar to C's "Return" for returning values from a VBA function?

Question

Not being entirely sure how to best articulate the title, I'll try to explain myself better here..

I do a lot of cutting and pasting of templated chunks of code that I repeat in most of my functions - typically, error handling and debugging facilities in general.

As returning values from functions is done by declaring MyFunction = "SomeValue", I figure there is little harm in asking if there is any way of generalizing away "MyFunction" (in this example)?

E.g.:

Function MyFunction() As String
    On Error GoTo ErrHandler

    ' <..do stuff here..>
    Exit Function

ErrHandler:
    MyFunction = "Something bad happened"

End Function

So if I were to copy this chunk as a template for all my future functions, I would love not having to replace every occurrence of the word MyFunction in the code.. So I wonder if there is some arbitrary keyword like Me to return the function's resultant value like you would use the Return function in C.

Hope that made sense!

possible duplicate of [How to Return from a VBA Function](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2781689/how-to-return-from-a-vba-function) — Keith Nicholas, Sep 15 '14 at 01:28
Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/gg264233%28v=office.15%29.aspx — Jean-François Corbett, Sep 15 '14 at 07:07

paxdiablo · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-11T01:07:04.653

No, that's the way the language is specified. If you want to return a value from the X function, you "assign" the value to X:

Function MyFunction() As String
    MyFunction = "Hello"
End Function

And keep in mind, that doesn't actually finish execution of your function, if you want that, you need to explicitly exit the function as well:

Function MyFunction() As String
    If a = 1 Then
        MyFunction = "Hello"
        Exit Function
    End If
    MyFunction = "Bye"
End Function

Without the exit function line in the above code, the function will return Bye rather than Hello.

If you really want a new keyword to do the work of both those statements, you could petition Microsoft for a change, but I don't think much of your chances since there's already a perfectly good way of doing it :-) They're likely to just come back and tell you to use C++ or C# if you want those constructs.

Is there a global keyword similar to C's "Return" for returning values from a VBA function?

1 Answers1