Converting a string representation of a constant into a constant?

Question

I\'m trying to accept a formatting constant from a data cell, so I have a string \"xlTotalsCalculationAverage\". How can I translate that into the Excel constant it represen

Answer 1

Since there is no really practical solution, you're generally stuck writing your own switch statements. Since the enums of the .NET Interop Libraries and VBA are, as far as I know, always the same, I wrote a program that generates VBA modules for each public enum inside a (list of) dll's. Here's the output for my Office.Core, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Publisher and Outlook dll's:

https://gitlab.com/jbjurstam/VbaHelpers/tree/master/GenerateVbaEnumHelpers/bin/Release/output

Here's an example of the code it generates for each enum:

Attribute VB_Name = "wMsoHyperlinkType"
Function MsoHyperlinkTypeFromString(value As String) As MsoHyperlinkType
    If IsNumeric(value) Then
        MsoHyperlinkTypeFromString = CInt(value)
        Exit Function
    End If

    Select Case value
        Case "msoHyperlinkRange": MsoHyperlinkTypeFromString = msoHyperlinkRange
        Case "msoHyperlinkShape": MsoHyperlinkTypeFromString = msoHyperlinkShape
        Case "msoHyperlinkInlineShape": MsoHyperlinkTypeFromString = msoHyperlinkInlineShape
    End Select
End Function

Function MsoHyperlinkTypeToString(value As MsoHyperlinkType) As String
    Select Case value
        Case msoHyperlinkRange: MsoHyperlinkTypeToString = "msoHyperlinkRange"
        Case msoHyperlinkShape: MsoHyperlinkTypeToString = "msoHyperlinkShape"
        Case msoHyperlinkInlineShape: MsoHyperlinkTypeToString = "msoHyperlinkInlineShape"
    End Select
End Function

Admittedly, it's not practical to include thousand modules in your project, but it's quite rare that you really need this kind of functionality, so I'd just include the things I need at the particular occasion.