9 - Handling Errors, Testing, and Debugging

Abstract

This chapter explores what might go wrong with the Outlook Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) or VBScript code and the way to fix it. There is no script debugging support for Outlook 2007 running on Windows Vista, unless Visual Studio is also installed on the machine. One alternative solution is testing the custom form code in Outlook VBA. Many types of errors can occur in the course of designing and running a code procedure. There are five varieties of errors: simple syntax errors, compile errors, runtime errors, logic errors, and Outlook application bugs. The first kind of error that the VBA programming environment can detect is the simple syntax errors, those that occur as one types the code statements in VBA. The Auto Syntax Check feature in VBA can detect errors only in single statements. When one compiles, VBA highlights only one error at a time. After one corrects the first error, compilation is required again to see whether additional errors are present.