Assignment Operator

The VBA assignment operator uses the equals character ( = ) in a VBA statement. The variable named to the left side of the assignment operator is assigned the operand value from the right side of the assignment operator, as shown here:

' declares integer variable named X
Dim X As Integer
' declares integer variable named Y
Dim Y as Integer
X = 123 ' assigns numeric value 123 to variable X
Y = X ' assigns value of variable X to variable Y

Only one variable can be assigned at any one time with the assignment operator.

There must be a space on either side of the assignment operator, or the equals character may be confused with either the variable name or the value being assigned, and a compile error may occur.

Unless the variable is a variant data type, the value being assigned must be the same data type as the variable receiving the assigned value. For instance, if you assign a text string into a long data type variable, you'll cause an error to occur.

The variable must be previously declared before being assigned a value. The value of a variable can be changed any number of times in a later statements, as in the following VBA example:

' declare integer variable named X
' and assign an initial numeric value of 123 to it
Dim X = 123 As Integer
' <statement>
' <statement>
' <statement>
' reassign X to store the numeric value 456
X = 456
' <statement>
' <statement>
' <statement>
' reassign X to store the numeric value 789
X = 789

See Also

Operators