Using MZ-Tools

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To start using MZ-Tools, open Visual Basic or launch the Visual Basic Editor of a VBA-enabled application with the Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11) menu.

When MZ-Tools is loaded in the Visual Basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE) it adds the following menus:

  • MZ-Tools under the Tools menu.
  • MZ-Tools under the context menu of code windows.
  • Several menu entries in the context menus of the Project Explorer.
  • A toolbar (which you can customize or hide).
  • Other context menus.

It is recommended to customize MZ-Tools to meet your needs the first time that you use it (see Customizing MZ-Tools).

MZ-Tools 3.0 for VBA provides most, but not all, of the features of MZ-Tools 3.0 for Visual Basic due to the following reasons:

  • Differences between the "Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Extensibility" and "Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility 5.3" extensibility models. The most noticeable difference is that the former provides the VBForm and VBControl classes while the latter uses the separate "Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library" component for that functionality, which is quite different. The consequence is that in this version, some features related to controls have not been implemented.
  • Differences between the hosts of MZ-Tools: Visual Basic 5.0 / 6.0 and the Visual Basic Editor for VBA are similar but not identical.
  • Differences between the storage of VB projects: Visual Basic uses separate files for projects (.vbp) and components (.frm, .bas, etc.) while VBA uses a single file for all the project components. The consequence is that some features such as Task List, Reload File and so on can not be implemented.

In the following sections you can learn about the features of MZ-Tools: