Raise Method

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

Generates a run-time error.

Syntax

object**.Raise number,** source, description, helpfile, helpcontext

The Raise method has the following object qualifier and named arguments:

Argument	Description
object	Required. Always the Err object.
number	Required. Long integer that identifies the nature of the error. Visual Basic errors (both Visual Basic-defined and user-defined errors) are in the range 0–65535. The range 0–512 is reserved for system errors; the range 513–65535 is available for user-defined errors. When setting the Number property to your own error code in a class module, you add your error code number to the vbObjectError constant. For example, to generate the error number 513, assign vbObjectError + 513 to the Number property.
source	Optional. String expression naming the object or application that generated the error. When setting this property for an object, use the form project.class. If source is not specified, the programmatic ID of the current Visual Basic project is used.
description	Optional. String expression describing the error. If unspecified, the value in Number is examined. If it can be mapped to a Visual Basic run-time error code, the string that would be returned by the Error function is used as Description. If there is no Visual Basic error corresponding to Number, the "Application-defined or object-defined error" message is used.
helpfile	Optional. The fully qualified path to the Help file in which help on this error can be found. If unspecified, Visual Basic uses the fully qualified drive, path, and file name of the Visual Basic Help file.
helpcontext	Optional. The context ID identifying a topic within helpfile that provides help for the error. If omitted, the Visual Basic Help file context ID for the error corresponding to the Number property is used, if it exists.

Remarks

All of the arguments are optional except number. If you use Raise without specifying some arguments, and the property settings of the Err object contain values that have not been cleared, those values serve as the values for your error.

Raise is used for generating run-time errors and can be used instead of the Error statement. Raise is useful for generating errors when writing class modules, because the Err object gives richer information than is possible if you generate errors with the Error statement. For example, with the Raise method, the source that generated the error can be specified in the Source property, online Help for the error can be referenced, and so on.

Example

This example uses the Err object's Raise method to generate an error within an Automation object written in Visual Basic. It has the programmatic ID MyProj.MyObject. On the MacIntosh, the default drive name is "HD" and portions of the pathname are separated by colons instead of backslashes.

Const MyContextID = 1010407    ' Define a constant for contextID.
Function TestName(CurrentName, NewName)
    If Instr(NewName, "bob") Then    ' Test the validity of NewName.
        ' Raise the exception
        Err.Raise vbObjectError + 513, "MyProj.MyObject", _
        "No ""bob"" allowed in your name", "c:\MyProj\MyHelp.Hlp", _
        MyContextID
    End If
End Function