What is a Dictionary ?
A Dictionary in VBA is a collectionobject: you can store all kinds of things in it: numbers, texts, dates, arrays, ranges, variables and objects.
Every item in a Dictionary gets its own unique key.
With that key you can get direct access to the item (reading/writing/adapting).
VBA has several methods to store data:
- a Dictionary
- a Collection
- an array (matrix) variable
- an ActiveX ComboBox
- an ActiveX ListBox
- a Userform control ComboBox
- a Userform control ListBox
- a sortedlist
- an arraylist
Which one to use is dependent of your ultimate goal.
This tutorial doesn't offer an exhaustive comparison of all these methods.
What a Dictionary has to offer will be discussed in detail.
With that knowledge it's easier to compare different methods and to make a choice between them.
An important chracteristic of a Dictionary is the use of unique keys.
It's not necessary to look for an item using a loop or by applying the Excelfunction application.match.
That's an advantage of a Dictionary compared to an array/matrix-variable.
The way in which the Dictionary stores items is comparable to the Collection object.
The Dictionary has some properties/functions/methods like .keys, .items and .removeall, that can be advantageous compared to the use of a collection.
So the preference for a Dictionary over a matrix variable or Collection is dependent of what you want to use it for.
A Dictionary in VBA is a collectionobject: you can store all kinds of things in it: numbers, texts, dates, arrays, ranges, variables and objects.
Every item in a Dictionary gets its own unique key.
With that key you can get direct access to the item (reading/writing/adapting).
VBA has several methods to store data:
- a Dictionary
- a Collection
- an array (matrix) variable
- an ActiveX ComboBox
- an ActiveX ListBox
- a Userform control ComboBox
- a Userform control ListBox
- a sortedlist
- an arraylist
Which one to use is dependent of your ultimate goal.
This tutorial doesn't offer an exhaustive comparison of all these methods.
What a Dictionary has to offer will be discussed in detail.
With that knowledge it's easier to compare different methods and to make a choice between them.
An important chracteristic of a Dictionary is the use of unique keys.
It's not necessary to look for an item using a loop or by applying the Excelfunction application.match.
That's an advantage of a Dictionary compared to an array/matrix-variable.
The way in which the Dictionary stores items is comparable to the Collection object.
The Dictionary has some properties/functions/methods like .keys, .items and .removeall, that can be advantageous compared to the use of a collection.
So the preference for a Dictionary over a matrix variable or Collection is dependent of what you want to use it for.