VarType Function

This page is specific to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Language Reference for Office 2010.

Returns an Integer indicating the subtype of a variable.

Syntax

VarType(varname)

The required varname argument is a Variant containing any variable except a variable of a user-defined type.

Return Values

Constant	Value	Description
vbEmpty	0	Empty (uninitialized)
vbNull	1	Null (no valid data)
vbInteger	2	Integer
vbLong	3	Long integer
vbSingle	4	Single-precision floating-point number
vbDouble	5	Double-precision floating-point number
vbCurrency	6	Currency value
vbDate	7	Date value
vbString	8	String
vbObject	9	Object
vbError	10	Error value
vbBoolean	11	Boolean value
vbVariant	12	Variant (used only with arrays of variants)
vbDataObject	13	A data access object
vbDecimal	14	Decimal value
vbByte	17	Byte value
vbLongLong	20	LongLong integer (Valid on 64-bit platforms only.)
vbUserDefinedType	36	Variants that contain user-defined types
vbArray	8192	Array

Note

These constants are specified by Visual Basic for Applications. The names can be used anywhere in your code in place of the actual values.

Remarks

The VarType function never returns the value for vbArray by itself. It is always added to some other value to indicate an array of a particular type. The constant vbVariant is only returned in conjunction with vbArray to indicate that the argument to the VarType function is an array of type Variant. For example, the value returned for an array of integers is calculated as vbInteger + vbArray, or 8194. If an object has a default property, VarType (object) returns the type of the object's default property.

Example

This example uses the VarType function to determine the subtype of a variable.

Dim IntVar, StrVar, DateVar, MyCheck
' Initialize variables.
IntVar = 459: StrVar = "Hello World": DateVar = #2/12/69# 
MyCheck = VarType(IntVar)    ' Returns 2.
MyCheck = VarType(DateVar)    ' Returns 7.
MyCheck = VarType(StrVar)    ' Returns 8.