Writing Conditional Expressions

One of the most useful tools for processing information in an event procedure is a conditional expression. A conditional expression is a part of a complete program statement that asks a true-or-false question about a property, a variable, or another piece of data in a macro. For example, the conditional expression

NumberOfWords < 100 

evaluates to True if the NumberOfWords variable contains a value that is less than 100, and it evaluates to False if NumberOfWords contains a value that is greater than or equal to 100. Table 39-1 shows the comparison operators you can use in a conditional expression.

Table 39-1. The Heart of a Conditional Expression Is the Comparison Operator

Comparison Operator	Meaning
=	Equal to
< >	Not equal to
>	Greater than
<	Less than
> =	Greater than or equal to
< =	Less than or equal to

NOTE

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Expressions that can be evaluated as True or False are also known as Boolean expressions, and the True or False result can be assigned to a Boolean variable or property.

Table 39-2 shows some conditional expressions and their results. You'll work with these expressions later in the chapter.

Table 39-2. Sample Conditional Expressions and Their Results

Conditional Expression	Result
10 <> 20	True (10 is not equal to 20)
Pages < 20	True if Pages is less than 20; otherwise, False
Application.UserName = "Hugh Victor"	True if the registered user name for your copy of Office is Hugh Victor; otherwise, False
Selection.Text = CityName	True if the selected text in your Word document matches the contents of the CityName variable; otherwise, False