VBA string array with unknown amount of strings - arrays

Question

First of all let me all congratulate you on a superb forum! it's helped me Loads! so far with getting my little program working... and now I'm finally stuck.
I am attempting to automate Outlook to send tailored Offers to clients through a UserForm.
We offer 5 types of solutions and I don't know if the client will want 1 (DCF) or 2 (Top-Slice) or 3 (Ertragswert) or 4 (Belwert) or the 5 (Sachwert) of them. So I need a way for the code to check how many Checkboxes are ticked and then order them into a string (I've named it ValTyp) and separate them with comas and insert an "and"before the last. Say client wants 1, 3 and 5. The solution would be DCF, Ertragswert and Sachwert. So far I have my checkboxes all checking for values as follows:
Public iSach As String
Private Sub CKSach_Click()
Dim Sach As Boolean
Sach = CKSach.Value
If Sach = True Then
iSach = "Sachwert "
ValCount = ValCount + 1
Else
iSach = ""
ValCount = ValCount - 1
End If
End Sub
I have attempted at building an IF statement for a similar part which has 3 options and one is a must:
If (iRics <> "" And iBelSTD <> "" And iImmo <> "") Then
Standard = (iRics & ", " & iBelSTD & "und " & iImmo)
ElseIf (iBelSTD <> "" Or iImmo <> "") Then
Standard = (iRics & "und " & iImmo & iBelSTD)
Else
Stadard = iRics
End If
I am thinking of creating an array, with the length of ValCount... but I seem to be completely unable t get it to work:
Dim Services() As String
ReDim Services(0 To 4) As String
If iDCF <> "" Then
Services(0) = iDCF
End If
If iDCF <> "" Then
Services(1) = iCore
End If
If iDCF <> "" Then
Services(2) = iErtrag
End If
If iDCF <> "" Then
Services(3) = iSach
End If
If iDCF <> "" Then
Services(4) = iBelVT
End If
Debug.Print Services(0, 1, 2, 3, 4)
I get an runtime-error 9 index outside bounds.
I have no idea what to do and I haven't even got to how to include the commas and "and".
Any help at all will be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Cliff

Answer 1

I would approach it like this: first, you store your checkboxes in a collection:
Dim cbs As New Collection
cbs.Add checkbox1
cbs.Add checkbox2
'...
cbs.Add checkbox5
Hence, you loop inside it to add the checked values into a new collection:
Dim myStr As String: myStr = ""
Dim cbsCheck As New Collection
'count "true"
For j = 1 To cbs.Count
If cbs(j).Value = True Then
cbsCheck.Add cbs(j)
End If
Next j
'hence you compose the string
If cbsCheck.Count = 0 Then
myStr = "No element selected"
ElseIf cbsCheck.Count = 1 Then
myStr = "You selected " & cbsCheck(1).Caption
Else
k = 1
myStr = "You selected "
While k < cbsCheck.Count
myStr = myStr & cbsCheck(k).Caption & ", "
k = k + 1
Loop
myStr = myStr & "and " & cbsCheck(k+1).Caption
End If
NOTE when you want to compose an array of elements of which you do NOT know the size in advance, in 95% of cases the object Collection is better than an object String Array.

Answer 2

You can use a collection instead of an array, which is most of the cases the better solution. If you really need an array for some reason, you can use the redim function to resize an array:
Example:
Dim myArray(3) As String
myArray(1) = "a"
myArray(2) = "b"
myArray(3) = "c"
ReDim myArray(4) As String
myArray(4) = "d"
You can also add a Preserve after ReDim to make sure the values won't get lost.