Using Breakpoints

Quick reference

• 00:05 There's another tool that works very, very well with stepping and
• 00:09 that's called a break point.
• 00:10 Now you'll notice in this particularly case that I have reset the file back
• 00:14 to the same debugging based file that I used for our stepping video.
• 00:18 So it doesn't have any of the additional stuff that hasn't been rolled forward
• 00:21 at all.
• 00:22 And I want you to start thinking about what happens when this code gets longer.
• 00:27 Right now it's only eight lines long.
• 00:30 It's not really a huge piece of code.
• 00:32 But what happens when it rolls out to 80 lines or 800 lines?
• 00:36 And I hope you never write a macro that's 800 lines.
• 00:39 I'll tell you why later.
• 00:40 But when it starts getting longer you may find that there's certain components that
• 00:45 you debugged your way through and you're happy they're working but
• 00:47 then you get down near the end, and you need to stop, and
• 00:50 actually look at your code in a little bit more detail to figure out what's going.
• 00:54 Now stepping, if that code block is 80 lines
• 00:59 down stepping 80 times to get in there is kind of painful and
• 01:03 a little bit tedious, and is gonna give you a cramp in your finger.
• 01:06 So we don't really want that.
• 01:07 What we would love to find is a way where we can actually run up to a certain
• 01:11 point and then stop there.
• 01:14 So to do this, what we gonna do is,
• 01:16 is we are gonna use the break point to make that happen.
• 01:20 Now if I look at this code here, let's say that, you know what,
• 01:23 these first three lines I'm happy with the way they were worked on.
• 01:26 I know that they've copied.
• 01:27 We've pasted.
• 01:27 We've cleared the contents here.
• 01:29 But I'm really interested in seeing what is going on inside this particular area
• 01:33 with the formula, maybe I want to try and
• 01:35 get this roll forward into a proper quadrant.
• 01:37 So what I am gonna do is I am going set up a break point on this particular line
• 01:42 because I want to be able to run my code until it hits this point and then stop.
• 01:47 To do this, what I am gonna do,
• 01:48 I don't even need to highlight anything over the margin here beside my code,
• 01:52 I can just click and it will create what's called a break point.
• 01:56 This red line with a dot.
• 01:58 What happens at this point is that I can still step into my code.
• 02:02 You'll notice that I can step.
• 02:04 I can step.
• 02:05 I can step.
• 02:05 It's doing the copy.
• 02:06 Now I'm not gonna paste at this point because I just wanted to demonstrate that
• 02:09 these work with stepping.
• 02:11 So I'm just gonna reset this now, and send it back out.
• 02:14 The other place that they work though is they work by running.
• 02:17 And I could run it by pressing the green arrow here, that'll run it.
• 02:21 I could even kick off my break point by clicking on the RollForward button, and
• 02:24 you'll notice that it actually executes all of these three steps.
• 02:27 So it's copied.
• 02:28 It's pasted.
• 02:29 It's cleared the contents in the content area, and
• 02:33 it's now stopped on the red line, ready for
• 02:36 me to actually look at this piece, so I can say, okay this is interesting.
• 02:39 So now I can step and that will create my formula for me.
• 02:43 I go that's not really the formula I was looking for
• 02:47 I wanted to advance it three months, so I could actually look at this.
• 02:50 I can say, well okay, I need on the EOMONTH function,
• 02:54 I wanted to advance it three months which will gave me April 30th.
• 02:59 Okay, so if I'm looking at that function, I take this back.
• 03:02 I see this is EOMONTH R1C, okay.
• 03:05 But it's got the comma here, so this is what I really wanted was this three.
• 03:10 Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab my yellow arrow, bring it back over here, and
• 03:15 I'm gonna delete this formula from the Excel worksheet.
• 03:17 So this is really cool because you can actually work back and
• 03:19 forth between Excel and VBA while the code is running live, that's awesome.
• 03:24 Now with this, what we can do is I move this cursor back,
• 03:27 I've deleted the formula, so I'm gonna try it again, we'll see if we get it right.
• 03:31 Step into, bingo, awesome that looks beautiful.
• 03:34 So now I'm really happy with the way the code is working, now I could copy and
• 03:38 I could then paste values, there we go.
• 03:41 Clear contents and select, and we're done.
• 03:45 Okay, perfect.
• 03:46 So that looks like it's working quite nicely.
• 03:49 How many break points can you use?
• 03:50 Well actually you can use lots.
• 03:53 So if I now hit run, you'll notice it stops.
• 03:57 I could run into the next one and I could say, hey, I really want to step
• 04:00 through this particular component and then I can run the rest of the way out.
• 04:05 Okay, so I can use lots of these guys all at once.
• 04:08 Now, do these stick around?
• 04:11 Can I release code with a break point in it?
• 04:14 Lets go file, save as, and I'm gonna go, and
• 04:18 put it in a different folder than the step vs run here.
• 04:20 Were gonna go back to using break points and I'm just gonna call this one.
• 04:25 Breakpoint, oops I'm trying to spell that correctly.
• 04:28 Here we are.
• 04:30 And now I'm gonna say File, Close.
• 04:31 File, Open and noticed that none of the break points are in my code anymore, so
• 04:37 I can't release with break points and this is good because we don't really want
• 04:43 to run launch the user into the Visual Basic, and I just make some freak out.
• 04:49 So this is a great technique cuz let say,
• 04:51 they works very well the compliment to stepping when your debugging.
• 04:53 You can run it through to the big block code you wanna check without having to
• 04:57 step three individual piece and then continue on from there.

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