XL5: Visual Basic Procedure to Display Screen Metrics

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Excel for Windows, version 5.0
• Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, version 7.0

SUMMARY

The following macro allows you to determine the metrics of your video display (that is, horizontal resolution, vertical resolution, number of colors) by using a macro in Microsoft Excel, version 5.0. This information may be helpful in creating macros that create variable-sized custom dialog boxes based on display size or take into account the effect of display resolution on printed output.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides examples of Visual Basic procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This Visual Basic procedure is provided 'as is' and Microsoft does not guarantee that it can be used in all situations. Microsoft does not support modifications of this procedure to suit customer requirements for a particular purpose. Note that a line that is preceded by an apostrophe introduces a comment in the code--comments are provided to explain what the code is doing at a particular point in the procedure. Note also that an underscore character (_) indicates that code continues from one line to the next. You can type lines that contain this character as one logical line or you can divide the lines of code and include the line continuation character. For more information about Visual Basic for Applications programming style, see the "Programming Style in This Manual" section in the "Document Conventions" section of the "Visual Basic User's Guide."

'Each Declare statement should be entered as a single line
Declare Function GetActiveWindow Lib "USER" () As Integer

Declare Function GetDeviceCaps Lib "GDI" (ByVal hDC As Integer, ByVal _

Declare Function GetDC Lib "USER" (ByVal hWnd As Integer) As Integer

Sub Display_info()
   'Returns the handle of the active window
   Act_Win = GetActiveWindow()
   'Returns the handle to the Device Context
   Dev_Con = GetDC(Act_Win)
   'Displays The Horizontal Video resolution
   MsgBox "Horz Video Resolution = " & GetDeviceCaps(Dev_Con, Horz_res)
   'Displays The Vertical Video resolution
   MsgBox "Vert Video Resolution =" & GetDeviceCaps(Dev_Con, Vert_res)
   'Displays the number of Planes
   MsgBox "Planes = " & GetDeviceCaps(Dev_Con, Planes)
   'Displays the number of Bits per Pixels
   MsgBox "Bits per Pixel = " & GetDeviceCaps(Dev_Con, BitsPixel)
End Sub

• Horizontal video resolution
• Vertical video resolution
• Number of Planes
• Bits per Pixel