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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T21:36:40+00:00

I have a question about the correct way to handle errors in VBA in

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I have a question about the correct way to handle errors in VBA in Excel. If a specific error, say xxxxxxx, occurs, then a MsgBox should be displayed. If another error occurs the standard run-time error handler should pop up. How can this be accomplished? Here is the example code:

On Error Resume Next

'Line of code that causes an error here.

If Err.Number = xxxxxxx Then

    MsgBox "Specific error message."

ElseIf Err.Number = 0 Then

    Do nothing

Else 'Some error other than xxxxxxx.

    'This is the problem. Here I would like to display standard run-time error
    'handler without causing the error again.

End If

On Error GoTo 0
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can get a message box that looks very much like the standard error message by putting this into your “Else” block:

    MsgBox "Run-time error '" & Err.Number & "':" & _
    vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _
    Error(Err.Number), vbExclamation + vbOKOnly, _
    "YourProjectNameHere"

    But this is just a facsimile. It’s not the actual error message dialog that VB6 puts up; it’s just formatted to look like it. Error handling is still disabled by the “On Error Resume Next” statement at this point.

    But if you really, really want to invoke the standard error handling code, you can put this in the “Else” block:

    Dim SaveError As Long
SaveError = Err.Number
On Error Goto 0
Error (SaveError)

    This code saves the error number, re-enables error handling, and then re-raises the error. You invoke the VB runtime’s true error handling machinery this way. But beware: if this error isn’t caught with an active error handler somewhere higher in the call chain, it will terminate your program after the user clicks on the “OK” button.

    Note that you’ll also lose the ability to get the actual line number where the error occurs using” Erl” in that error handler because you are re-generating the runtime error with the “Error (SaveError)” statement. But that probably won’t matter because most VB code doesn’t actually use any line numbers, so Erl just returns 0 anyway.

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