How to invoke Add a Digital Signature dialog in Excel VBA - windows

Question

I want to write a simple Excel macro, that invokes Add Digital Signature dialog for the user. I do not want to add the signature itself, just to show the Add Digital Signature dialog so that user doesn't have to look for it him or herself. I was googling for solution and understand that this can not be done in native Excel VBA. One has to call Windows Shell directly. How do I do that?

Answer 1

You don't state your Excel version but assuming you have a version with the ribbon UI. There are a couple of options - you can use the fluent UI control identifier and this code:
Option Explicit
Sub FindControlByFluentUIId()
Dim objCtrl As CommandBarControl
Dim lngId As Long
On Error GoTo ErrHandler
' magic number of Add Digital Signature
lngId = 13035
' find that control in the command bars collection
' this line throws an error for some workbooks !?
Set obj = Application.CommandBars.FindControl(Office.MsoControlType.msoControlButton, lngId)
' execute
If Not obj Is Nothing Then
obj.Execute
Else
MsgBox "Not found"
End If
End Sub
ErrHandler:
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Debug.Print Err.Description
End If
End Sub
The full list of codes is here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36798
If you didn't know the ID for some reason you can manually search each control collection of each command bar for a control with Caption this is like the one you are looking for. You are better off doing a wildcard search with the Like operator because you may not know the exact case of the control caption and position of the &s that facilitate keyboard short-cuts.
You can try something like this:
Option Explicit
Sub TestFindControl()
Dim strCaptionWild As String
Dim objCtrl As CommandBarControl
' use wildcards to help find the control
strCaptionWild = "*add*a*digital*signature*"
' call the function to find by caption
Set objCtrl = FindControl(strCaptionWild)
' execute on match
If Not objCtrl Is Nothing Then
Debug.Print "Command bar index: " & objCtrl.Parent.Index
Debug.Print "Control index: " & objCtrl.Index
Debug.Print "Real caption: " & objCtrl.Caption
objCtrl.Execute
Else
MsgBox "Not found for caption: " & strCaptionWild
End If
End Sub
Function FindControl(ByVal strCaption As String) As CommandBarControl
Dim objCb As CommandBar
Dim objCtrl As CommandBarControl
Dim blnFound As Boolean
On Error GoTo ErrHandler
' not found the control
blnFound = False
' iterate command bars and their controls
For Each objCb In Application.CommandBars
For Each objCtrl In objCb.Controls
' use like operator check control caption vs input caption
' LIKE enables use of wildcard matching
If LCase$(objCtrl.Caption) Like LCase$(strCaption) Then
' found it
blnFound = True
Exit For
End If
Next objCtrl
If blnFound Then Exit For
Next objCb
Set FindControl = objCtrl
Exit Function
ErrHandler:
Debug.Print Err.Description
Set FindControl = Nothing
End Function