ActiveX Automation

Automation is the process of one application using another application's data and manipulating that data. You can build applications by tying together intrinsic Visual Basic controls, and you can also use objects provided by other applications. Consider placing these objects on a Visual Basic form:

• A Microsoft Excel Chart object
• A Microsoft Excel Worksheet object
• A Microsoft Word Document object

Automation is a feature of the Component Object Model (COM), an industry standard used by applications to expose objects to development tools and other applications.

Visual Basic supports such automation of controls between applications. For example, you can open Excel, load a worksheet, manipulate the worksheet's data with Excel-based commands, close Excel, and then embed the resulting worksheet in your application's form window without user ever knowing that you borrowed Excel's capabilities.

However, you are limited to using automation only for ActiveX applications registered in your system's registry. If you use an application that is ActiveX aware, that application registered its automation availability in your system Registry when you installed the application.