Excel VBA MsgBox - Message Box Macro

Create a pop-up message box in Excel using VBA Macros. This allows you to show a message to the user and to get input back, depending on which buttons were clicked in the pop-up message.

To output a message in Excel, we use the MsgBox function. Below, you will find many examples that should suit your needs.

Sections:

Syntax

Example 1 - Output Basic Text

Example 2 - Add Buttons to the Message Box

Example 3 - Figure Out Which Button Was Clicked

Example 4 - Do Something After the User Clicks a Button

Example 5 - Change MsgBox Appearance

Notes

Syntax

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MsgBox(prompt, [buttons], [title], [helpfile], [context])

[] means it is an optional argument.

Button Arguments

These are the values that can be entered for the buttons argument. You will use the VB Codes to add them to the message box. Examples below will include some of these options so you can better understand them.

Values Returned from Button Clicks in the Message Box

When a user clicks one of the buttons that are in the message box, a value will be returned to VBA; that value corresponds to the button that was clicked and is listed below.

Example 1 - Output Basic Text

Basic message box with text.

This is the simplest form of outputting a message.

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MsgBox "Hi, this is my message."

Running the macro we get this:

Remember, the OK button is there by default and clicking that simply closes the pop-up message box window.

Example 2 - Add Buttons to the Message Box

Message box with multiple buttons.

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MsgBox "Hi, this is my message.", vbYesNoCancel

I added a comma after the display text and then input one of the VB codes from the Button Arguments list above.

Run the macro and we get this in Excel:

Example 3 - Figure Out Which Button Was Clicked

When a button is clicked, it sends a value back to Excel. Now, we need to capture that value so we can do something with it.

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response = MsgBox("Hi, this is my message.", vbYesNoCancel)

All we have to do is to set a variable equal to the output of the MsgBox function. Here, the variable response is equal to the output of the function, which means that we type response =  and then the msgbox function.

Note also that there are now parentheses surrounding the arguments for the MsgBox function; these weren't included before because they weren't needed. Often, they aren't used when creating simple pop-up windows.

I will now output the variable response into a Msgbox of its own so you can see the value it returns after a button was clicked.

Here is the final code for this example:

Run it and you get this:

Click one of the buttons and the next message box will open with the value that was returned as a result of the button click in the first window.

A 6 is returned, which means the button Yes was clicked. We know this from the table above "Values Returned from Button Clicks in the Message Box", which lists the values that each button click will return.

Example 4 - Do Something After the User Clicks a Button

Now that you know how to determine which button was clicked, let's do something useful with it.

I will make a simple IF statement that checks which button was clicked and outputs a message based on that.

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Sub button_action_msgbox()

response = MsgBox("Hi, this is my message.", vbYesNo)

If response = 6 Then
    MsgBox "You clicked Yes"
ElseIf response = 7 Then
    MsgBox "You clicked No"
End If

End Sub

Run the macro:

Hit one of the buttons and the next part of the macro will run and the corresponding msgbox will appear:

At this point, we have created a useful pop-up message box that solicits feedback and does something with that feedback.

Example 5 - Change MsgBox Appearance

You can add some additional things to the pop-up window to change its look and feel and here I will include some of those options, including a custom title for the window.

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Sub button_style_msgbox()

MsgBox _
    "Hi, this is my message.", _
    vbOKOnly + vbInformation, _
    "Custom Title"

End Sub

First, notice that I used "_" at the end of each line so that I could place this piece of code on multiple lines.

Second, notice that there is now a custom title called Custom Title that will appear for the msgbox.

Third, notice that there is more than one option for the buttons argument and that each argument is separated with a plus sign (+) like this: vbOKOnly + vbInformation.

Run the macro and we get this:

The option vbOKOnly meant there would be only an OK button. The option vbInformation put that image with the i inside the blue circle in there. The custom title appears in the upper-left corner of the pop-up message box window.

Notes

These are a few examples that should get you comfortable using the Message Box pop-up window feature in macros in Excel.

This is a great way to give some information to your user that they must process or at least must reply to in some way before continuing.

Make sure to download the sample file attached to this tutorial to get all of the sample VBA Macro codes.