Export/Import Variables, Properties & UDT's for VB6 & VBA

This system enables you to bundle data from a program into a highly compact binary array that can be sent to other programs, saved to disk, re-used within a program, etc. It works in 32- and 64-bit VBA and VB6. It allows you to easily transfer data between 32 and 64-bit programs. You specify one or more variables in your program to bundle and BinaryMagic will auto-generate the code you can include in your code to bundle the variables any time you want to. There is an equivalent set of procedures that allow you use the binary array and copy those values back into variables, presumably in the import program. Below are some simple examples of its use:

Saving and restoring data for forms including size and position and values for the controls on the form. You can save this to file and easily restore it the next time your form loads.
You want to pass data between 2 programs that are running at the same time. This data can be saved to a file or it could be sent via COM, memory-mapped files, etc.
You have a 64-bit VBA program and you want to use a sophisticated form for Data I/O. Oops, Microsoft crippled 64-bit VBA from when it first came out in Office 2010 and it only has a bare minimum of forms available for you to use. Now that Krool, fafalone and others on VBForums have created modern Unicode-capable controls for 32-bit VB6, you might be tempted to run your VBA code, shell out to a VB6 program which will restore prior data, get user input using these new controls on VB6 Forms and transmit the user entry data back to the VBA program. It is normally not so easy to send data between a 64-bit and a 32-bit program but we will show you how easy this is a bit later.
You can save/restore your program settings to/from the Windows Registry with all of the data in one binary string.
You can easily take the binary array generated for export and make it into a String (such as for an INI file) and then easily get the binary data back from the String on the Import PC with no data loss (we do it in such a fashion that VB does not try to convert the data from Unicode to ANSI).

We can handle virtually any type of data or properties VB can generate in any order including:

Scalar values such as Byte, Integer, Long, Boolean, Date, Single, Double, Currency and Boolean. These include individual values and arrays of any size up to 10 dimensions.
Scalar values unique to 64-bit VBA- LongLong and LongPtr including arrays of up to 10 dimensions. It even handles movement of these data types to/from 64 and 32-bit programs even though 32-bit programs don’t have these data types.
Strings (and String arrays) - Completely copied/restored in Unicode (no ANSI conversion).
Variants- This is by far the most complex variable in VB. It can contain any of the scalar values; it can handle arrays of any type including more Variants; it can contain arrays of arrays; and it can contain arrays of mixed data types. We handle any of these.
User-Defined Types (UDT’s)- It can handle simple and array UDT's. It can handle any complexity of UDT’s including nested to any levels. For example, a UDT can contain other UDT’s within its Type definition and that UDT can be simple or array or even contain other UDT’s. If you want to save all of the variables in a UDT you can do so with one line of code.
Objects, individual and arrayed- Note that at present, any arriving objects are set to Nothing. This program exports a set of values and an Object is not a value but rather a link to something else. For example, if you have a variable in Excel defined as “myWorksheet As Worksheet” and you used Set to start the COM connection, sending that connection to another program makes no sense because the other program wouldn’t have the connection made so it couldn’t use the Object information. In order to not crash the data transfer I decided to include Objects but will set them to Nothing (no Object data is sent and all Objects on the incoming end are Set to Nothing). You can still have arrays of Objects, up to 10 dimensions with each member Set to Nothing.
Public variables in Class/Standard modules and Forms.
Properties in Class/Standard modules and Forms. This includes Property Get (for export) and Property Let (for import). Note that these are actually not variables but are instead stack values that may be manipulated in the Class or Form code. If you Export/Import properties, ensure that you have a Property Get in the Exporting program and a corresponding Property Let in the importing program. Note also that the Property Get/Let statements can only have the property itself in the call. No other passed parameters are allowed. That isn't as restrictive as it sounds. If you have Property Get/Let statements that take additional parameters, you can just do the calls, assign the property to a variable on the Export and use that variable. Then reverse that on the import side by making the value you exported to a variable and then use that variable plus whatever other parameters you need for the Property Let call.
In general, a Variant cannot contain a UDT. There is an exception for ActiveX DLL’s and EXE’s. My impression is that this is rarely used so I chose not to deal with UDT’s in Variants (let me know if you think otherwise). I believe I cover all other VB variables as well as properties but if you find I have missed one or more, please let me know and I’ll make sure it is covered.

Variable Scope- One key aspect of all of this is that your variables and properties need to be in scope wherever you make the calls in both the exporting program and the importing program. For example, suppose you have two modules, ModA and ModB and that you have a variable you declare with a Dim statement in ModB which makes that variable only available in ModB. If you put the generated code (more on that in a bit) in ModA, you can’t export the Dim’d variable in ModB because it is not visible in ModA.

This is really no different than your normal coding. If you have a statement “a = b + c” in ModA but “c” is Dim’d as a local variable in another procedure, your code won’t work because the code can’t “see” variable “c”.

Enums- We can handle values (alone or as an array) declared as an Enum but you must tell our code that it is an Enum. Any variable declared as an Enum is actually a Long so you will need to tell our code that it is an Enum so it can be dealt with as a Long. Otherwise, the code will check all of the other variables and UDT definitions and Objects for the variable Type and will not find it, generating an error. It is easy to handle this and we’ll cover this later.

Objects- Likewise, if you have a variable declared as an Object, we won’t know what to do with it (and will error like described above because we can’t find its Type). The easiest thing to do is change the declaration in your code to be a variable of Type Object instead of Workbook or whatever else you have defined it to be. This is not a big deal since our code will set it to Nothing on the import end so we really don’t need to know what Type of Object it really is.

If you need to move the binary array as a String or a Variant, this is very simple to do and I provide easy directions for how to do this (especially important for strings so you don't get the "helpful" VB technique of automatically converting the internal Unicode string to ANSI which is horrible for binary data).

There are 3 examples attached for VB6 and 3 for Excel. A detailed user's guide is attached. I believe I have handled every type of variable you can use except for UDT's inside of a Variant. If I have left out any variable or Property types, please let me know and I'll get them included.

I have focused on generating the binary array and restoring data from the binary array. There are many ways to get this data to move where you need it, much of which has been covered in VBForums. This includes reading/writing to the registry, comm between processes such as pipes, memory mapped files, sockets, disk files, Windows messages etc. so I have not specifically covered that here other than in one of the examples.

Small update 23 May 2022-Fixed small error in setting 1 initial value in fmInput.frm in BinaryMagic.vbp:

Line 70 was

Code:

cboxEditGenFiles.Value = IIf(.GetINIKey(i, "EditGenFiles") = 1, vbChecked, vbUnchecked)

is now

Code:

If StrComp(.GetINIKey(i, "EditGenFiles"), "1", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then cboxEditGenFiles.Value = vbChecked

It's a value from an INI file so it should be a text comparison not a numerical comparison.

So either make the small edit or re-download the file "BinaryMagic.xip". Thanks to DaveDavis for catching this.

Also, since using this utility is a multi-step process involving generating some code and pasting it into your own code, I encourage you to download the documentation. My description above says what it can do but it doesn't tell you how to do it. I think it is all very straightfoward but the documentation will really help a lot.