Vba File Copy Progress Bar

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Some VBA Macros run for ages – be it minutes or even hours. If we optimized our VBA Macro to the fullest there is often not much more you can do to change that. Usually what is irritating is waiting for VBA Macro code completion. Sitting by your desk is a waste of time – why not tell Excel/Access to let you know when the code has completed? Today we will explore such tools as the VBA Status Bar, VBA Progress Bar, Sound Notifications in VBA and Sending Email Alerts from VBA.

  • You'd have to do it at the per-file level (i.e. 'Copying file 1 of 5') and not at the byte level (i.e. 'Copying 34,000 bytes of 83,000') because there aren't callbacks from the standard.NET copy methods that will report progress. So count the total number of files (return value from src.EnumerateFiles) then change the loop to a regular for.
  • The quick and easy way is to use Application.StatusBar. Code: Application.StatusBar = 'Processing File: ' & sFile. Beyond that, the next level is coding userform-based progress bars. Google 'excel vba progress bar'. There are a lot of examples.

VBA Progress Bar

Progress Bars are ubiquitous anywhere anything takes more than a couple of seconds to complete. So why doesn’t VBA have a native Progress Bar – beats me.

To add a VBA Progress Bar to your Visual Basic for Applications macro read my post here.

A progress bar is a great addition for Excel macros that take long to run. It gives your project a more professional touch. It's also quite easy to add. You can create your progress bar once and reuse it in your Excel vba projects.

Excel Status Bar

The VBA Status Bar is a panel that appears at the bottom of your Excel (or Access) Workbook. It is basically a Text Box to which you can display any non-blocking (non-modal) Message to your users.

Showing a Message in the VBA Status Bar

To show a message in the VBA Status Bar we need to Enable it using Application.DisplayStatusBar:

Hiding the VBA Status Bar

The VBA Status Bar when displayed, will remain displayed until ordered otherwise. It is best to hide and clean it after code execution completion:

Access Vba File Copy

Sound Notifications in VBA

What if you are away from your Screen, getting a Coffee or simply chatting with a colleague or getting on with our tasks stressed that we might miss that moment when our VBA Macro completes its task. Well why not introduce a Sound Notification? Let Excel or Access run a Sound to inform you that your Visual Basic for Applications macro has finally completed.

Playing a Sound in VBA

Playing a Sound in VBA is easy. Just add the below code snippet to a VBA Module:

It will play the Chimes.wav sound Once.

What if you don’t hear it? Running it once might obviously be not enough…

VBA Sound Alarm

The best approach is to create a VBA Sound Alarm that will run in a loop until we Turn it Off manually. What we will need is a Non-Modal UserForm as a pop-up to ask to stop the alarm.

First the macro code:

What happens here?:

  • I am measuring the execution time with the startTime and execTime variables
  • I am using the stopPlaying global VBA Variable to Turn Off the Alarm from our Alarm UserForm changes this value to True
  • I am displaying the AlarmForm with the Turn Off Alarm button

Vba File Copy Progress Bar Python

And now our AlarmForm code:

The result:

Vba file copy progress bar example

VBA Send Email Notification

Lastly when we are on the run and leaving our Workstation to process our VBA Macro remotely we might appreciate an email from Excel saying: Hey there! I just completed running the Macro!

Vba File Copy Progress Bar

Vba

Vba File Copy Progress Bar Python

You can find the code for the SendEmailFromOutlook function in my post here.

We might want to spice things up with maybe sending also the time it took to complete the macro:

Cool right? Makes the VBA Message Box hide in shame doesn’t it? The email should look like this:

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