Excel VBA - Set values of Enumerated elements

Question

In a Class Module there is:

Private Enum colType
    ID = "A"
    SSN = "B"
    lName = "H"
    fName = "G"
End Enum

as a private member. Whenever the class initializes I get the Compile Error: Type Mismatch message. If I declare colType as Private Enum coltype As String. That gets highlighted red as an error and I get the message:

Compile Error: Expected end of statement

Is specifying the values of enumerated elements Unallowed in Excel VBA?

Answer 1

As written in the comments, this is not possible. There is possible workaround though that I used in the past. Have:

Private Enum colType
  ID = 1
  SSN = 2
  lName = 3
  fName = 4
End Enum

And then create a separate String property of function such as:

Public Property Get colType_String(colType) as String
  Dim v as Variant
  v= Array("A","B", ...)
  colType_String = vba.cstr(v(colType))
End Property

This is not the most universal solution, but it is easy to implement and it does the job... If you have this in the class module already you can even use property on private colType variable and there is no need to have colType input into the property.

Answer 2

I quite like ex-man's solution in certain circumstances, for which reason I've upvoted it. The solution more often posited goes along the following lines:

Enum myEnum
  myName1 = 1
  myName2 = 2
  myName3 = 3
End Enum

Function getEnumName(eValue As myEnum)
  Select Case eValue
  Case 1
    getEnumName = "myName1"
  Case 2
    getEnumName = "myName2"
  Case 3
    getEnumName = "myName3"
  End Select
End Function

Debug.Print getEnumName(2) prints "myName2"