Text box prompt text in Excel VBA

Question

You know how sometimes you see text in an input field prompting for an answer? When you click it, it goes away, but comes back if you deselect without having typed anything.

How do I accomplish this in an Excel text box? Can this be done at all?

I think I could accomplish this if I attach a click macro to the text box and the macro can be able to tell what text box was clicked, but the problem with the click macro is it won't let you select the object first, so you have no idea what was clicked. And I don't want to hard code the text box name in the click macro code.

Solution

I think you're referring to a "placeholder" in a UserForm. The two tricks that I use to achieve this are the "tag" property and Enter and Exit events. First, create your sub modules that will fire upon Enter (focus) and Exit (blur).

Sub TB_enter(TB_name)
    If Len(Me.Controls(TB_name).Tag) = 0 Then
        Me.Controls(TB_name).Tag = Me.Controls(TB_name).Value
        Me.Controls(TB_name).Value = vbNullString
    End If
End Sub
Sub TB_exit(TB_name)
    If Len(Me.Controls(TB_name).Value) = 0 Then
        Me.Controls(TB_name).Value = Me.Controls(TB_name).Tag
        Me.Controls(TB_name).Tag = vbNullString
    End If
End Sub

Next, for each instance of your textbox on your userform, double click on the textbox while in View Object mode. This will automatically create a Private Sub for the change event. Head to the upper right hand corner of the toolbar and change the "Change" drop down list to "Enter". This will create a new Private Sub for the Enter event. Repeat this process again, but select "Exit" to create the Exit event. Now, simply copy the following code into the Enter and Exit events respectively (I've used the default name for the first textbox, but this is name independent when calling the events).

Private Sub TextBox1_Enter()
    TB_enter ActiveControl.Name
End Sub
Private Sub TextBox1_Exit(ByVal Cancel As MSForms.ReturnBoolean)
    TB_exit ActiveControl.Name
End Sub

If you are placing these calls in an external module, simply replace "Me" with the name of the UserForm.

Comments

[Wes]

I'm not using UserForms, but it's OK it's just a nicety I don't really need.

[Wes]

Your solution requires that you have the text box referenced in your code, but I do not have that luxury because these text boxes get copied by the user and there's no way to get an explicit reference to the copied text box. For instance say the copied text box is automatically labeled "text box 2" but your events only apply to text box 1.

[Jesse]

You could loop through all text boxes on the active sheet, would be fast but you'd have to use the same text for all of them.

[Michael]

How exactly are you using this Excel sheet? Are you using ActiveX controls for the text box? Can the user copy and paste these text boxes anywhere in the Excel sheet? You might just want to consider Conditional Formatting a cell and putting Data Validation with an Input Message in the cell. A user can copy and paste this to their heart's content.

[Wes]

Is there an event that could capture clicking on any text box? Then when that happens be provided a reference to the text box that was clicked?