Developing Multilingual VBA Apps

I wanted to develop an application that supported various common languages
(English, Spanish, etc). The idea is the person could select the language
from a drop down combo box and this selection would then drive the
appropriate forms and dialog boxes.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to go about coding such a concept?

Hi BlazinJ,

If you mean are there built in system translators, then the answaer is no. Windows does support Unicode. This only provides built in alphabet support. You would have to create a support structure to change labels based on the language selected (i.e. the proper label and help file translations). It is doable, however, it is a lot of work.

Best Wishes,
Leith Ross

Hi Blazin,

> I wanted to develop an application that supported various common languages
> (English, Spanish, etc). The idea is the person could select the language
> from a drop down combo box and this selection would then drive the
> appropriate forms and dialog boxes.
>
> Does anybody have any ideas on how to go about coding such a concept?

The usual approach is to include a language look-up table in a worksheet,
such that each bit of text is given a unique ID. One row for each ID, one
column for each language. When the form is shown, code in the Initialize
event reads the ID from the control, looks up the appropriate text and writes
it to the control.

This technique is covered in a little more detail in my "International
Issues" chapter of the "Excel 2002 VBA Programmer's Reference", which can be
read online on my web site.

Regards

Stephen Bullen
Microsoft MVP - Excel
www.oaltd.co.uk