You can be guaranteed a newly-declared boolean variable will have a
value that coerces to false i.e.

Sub test()
Dim blnTest As Boolean
Debug.Print blnTest ' returns false
Debug.Print blnTest = Empty ' returns true
Debug.Print IsEmpty(blnTest) ' returns false
End Sub

But best practise is to never use a *public* variable.

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"Stratuser" wrote in message ...
When an Excel file with a macro is opened, do all the
forms and the controls on the forms exist before the form
is initialized or called? The reason I am asking is that
I was recently using the value of a form's checkbox
instead of a boolean variable to control an IF statement.
It seems to work just as well either way, but I decided
that it might be dangerous to assume that the form's
checkbox is true or false or even that the form exists
before being called, so I created an explicit boolean
variable and made it public. What's the best practice?