I am trying to write a simple VBA macro that reads Text data from a Serial port and puts it into an Excel 2003 spread sheet. The solution needs to work from a standard installation of Office 2003. I cannot use add-in modules since the envrioment has been locked by the SysAdmin.
Can I make calls to windows API to communicate with the port from Excel
Is there some sample VBA code that shows how to do this
Serial Port communication from Excel 2003
Tamama
Hi, here's an article with a lot of code in it that demonstrates calling WinAPI from VB.NET to access the serial port. I know your looking for VBA but maybe there's something there you can work with.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx scid=kb;en-us;823179&Product=vb6
If your using Win API for serial port access your macro is going to be anything but simple. Check if you have MS Comm... if not maybe get yourself a third party DLL wrapper that you can call.
Admin don't need to register DLL's for you to use them, store then in the directory along with the spreasheet and access them as you would the Windows API.
MarinaGre
here you go.... some VB source code that does it. Haven't looked through the code myself but it reads the business.
http://www.thescarms.com/VBasic/CommIO.asp
DarkBls
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried the MSComm approach. There are some detailed instructions on how to install the DLL at http://www.yes-tele.com/ . It seems there are some licensing issues with MSComm. It will only run on a computer that has the Visual Studio or Visual Basic environment installed. The article link you sent has a special note at line item 7 about this problem.
Yes-Tele provided a registry hack to get around the problem but I cannot modify the registry on this computer. It would take an act of congress to get the IT department to allow me to do this so it looks like my only approach is Win32 calls. You’re correct that it will be anything but simple the first time...but next time it will be really easy.
Bruce Prang - MSFT
Thanks Derek,
I am having trouble accessing this second link from my computer at work (probably a filter problem) so I will try it when I get home tonight. The first link you sent probably has what I need. It makes calls to the WinAPI to talk to the serial port and parallel port.