Creating and Using Objects

Objects are combinations of code and data that can be treated as single units. Nearly everything you do in Visual Basic involves objects, from the controls you use to the forms on which you place them. This section discusses where objects originate and how to use them.

In This Section

• Objects from Visual Basic and Other Sources
  Discusses how to use objects from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and other applications.

• How to: Set and Retrieve Properties
  Discusses how to change and obtain property values.

• How to: Perform Actions with Methods
  Describes what methods are and how to use them.

• How to: Treat Forms as Objects
  Shows how to use forms in the same way as ordinary objects.

• How to: Access a Form
  Demonstrates how to access the members of a form without having to create a variable.

• How to: Use the New Keyword
  Shows how to create instances of forms, classes defined in class modules, and collections.

• Resource Management
  Discusses how to save memory and system resources by releasing references to objects.

• How to: Pass Objects to Procedures
  Describes how to pass objects as arguments to procedures.

• Walkthrough: Persisting an Object in Visual Basic
  Demonstrates how serialization can be used to persist an object's data between instances, allowing you to store values and retrieve them the next time the object is instantiated.

• How to: Inherit from a Class in Visual Basic
  Shows how to define a base class and declare classes that extend the base class.

Related Sections

• Objects in Visual Basic
  Covers object-oriented programming fundamentals.

• Managing Groups of Objects
  Lists techniques for working with arrays and collections of objects.

• How to: Perform Multiple Actions on an Object
  Covers using the With...End With statement to simplify property access.