How Can I Comprehensively Manage my VBA UserForm's Properties?

Question

I am writing my first VBA Add-In under Microsoft Office Word 2007 with Windows 7 Pro/64. Part of this Add-In is a UserForm. Using the Visual Basic editor that runs from Word, I find there are two ways of viewing, and two ways of modifying a UserForm's properties:

1. View all properties from Object Browser (F2)
2. View some properties and edit them from Properties Window (F4)
3. Manually enter and edit any property from the Code window (F7)

Here is a screenshot of my Properties and Code windows:

A problem I find is that the Properties Window contains only a subset of the UserForm's properties (notice that CanPaste, CanRedo, and CanUndo don't appear in Properties), and changes made in the Properties Window are overridden by changes made in the Code window (e.g., at runtime, Me.Caption from the Code window above overrides the Caption field in Properties).

I suppose I should avoid using Properties at all then, and enter all settings via UserForm_Initialize as shown above. But (a) for some settings, Properties makes several settings at once. For example, selecting Verdana Bold from Properties equals Font = Verdana and Font.Bold = True in Code. And (b) it seems Properties sets the subset of properties it controls to defaults of its choosing, and if I change them I can't see what they started out as.

I therefore desire unified and comprehensive access to all my UserForm's properties at once, including the aforementioned default settings. Does anyone know how to reveal a UserForm's default settings as code, or to automatically open all its current settings in the Code window? Is there an umbrella mechanism I'm not aware of?

I'm not a veteran VBA programmer, but I can't believe my experience is unique. I've searched the 'net in vain for a solution. How do you with more experience manage this dilemma?

Answer 1

You use the Properties window to set appearance-related properties at design time. Those property values will then always apply unless you explicitly change them at run-time with VBA code.

Properties that don't relate to appearance, such as CanPaste and CanRedo relate to the state of the form at run-time, so it doesn't make sense to have them configurable at design-time.

You can change nearly all of the properties at run-time, whether it is in the Initialize event or elsewhere. You can even add controls at run-time, but your changes won't be persisted once the instance of the form terminates.