Hi folks,

Until recently my Excel VBA was rather pedstrian since I do most
work in Word. As that changes, I'm hitting obstacles I'd hoped
forever to avoid -- like storing info externally, which in Word
is typically done using INI files and the PrivateProfileString
property which Excel doesn't have, and which Googling indicates
I should use SaveSetting & GetSetting instead of.

But since SaveSetting saves information directly to the Windows
registry, which is a big mean scaly fire-breathing monster that
devours--- er, I mean a very large file that doesn't like being
messed with, isn't it treacherous to make frequent trivial saves
to it? Isn't it at least high-overhead?

To me the apparent advantage of INI files has always been that
they're tiny and also that they're just plain text, so repeatedly
altering their content seems both ultra-safe and a negligible
resource drain; I can change an INI file in the middle of a
macro without the slightest slowdown. Is the registry different
from other large files in this respect? That is, can it take
more abuse from frequent saves? And can it somehow do those
saves lightning fast?

Appreciate any insight.

--
Mark Tangard , Microsoft Word MVP
Note well: MVPs do not work for Microsoft.
"Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." --John Waters

applications are writing to the registry continually - a lot of the option
changes you make in word or excel are stored there as an example.

If you want to write to ini files, you still have the API versions of
PrivateProfileString available to work with.

Go to Google groups advanced search:

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en

for search term (first box) use
PrivateProfileString
for newgroup use
microsoft.public.excel.programming

hit the search button

This should give you plenty of examples.

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy



"Mark Tangard" wrote in message
...
Hi folks,

Until recently my Excel VBA was rather pedstrian since I do most
work in Word. As that changes, I'm hitting obstacles I'd hoped
forever to avoid -- like storing info externally, which in Word
is typically done using INI files and the PrivateProfileString
property which Excel doesn't have, and which Googling indicates
I should use SaveSetting & GetSetting instead of.

But since SaveSetting saves information directly to the Windows
registry, which is a big mean scaly fire-breathing monster that
devours--- er, I mean a very large file that doesn't like being
messed with, isn't it treacherous to make frequent trivial saves
to it? Isn't it at least high-overhead?

To me the apparent advantage of INI files has always been that
they're tiny and also that they're just plain text, so repeatedly
altering their content seems both ultra-safe and a negligible
resource drain; I can change an INI file in the middle of a
macro without the slightest slowdown. Is the registry different
from other large files in this respect? That is, can it take
more abuse from frequent saves? And can it somehow do those
saves lightning fast?

Appreciate any insight.

--
Mark Tangard , Microsoft Word MVP
Note well: MVPs do not work for Microsoft.
"Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." --John Waters