Private & Public Procedures

The Private or Public keyword determines the scope of the subroutine or function. If you omit this part of the declaration, the subroutine or function will be public by default. Consider the following declaration:

Private Sub calc()

The above procedure can only be called from the module in which it resides. Now consider the following declaration:

Public Sub calc()

Any procedure from any module in that particular application call the above procedure.

Variable Declaration

Variables can also have public and private scope. So far, we've used the Dim statement to declare variables. Normally, you don't need to specify whether a variable is declared as public or private. Variables declared within a subroutine or function are automatically private and cannot be declared public.

All controls are always visible and public to all code within the application.

To make a variable truly global to an entire project, you must use the Public keyword and place the declaration in a module's Declaration section.