Adding MSCOMM Active-X control to your PC

摘要

The two previous Interface articles were devoted to the use of the MSCOMM ActiveX control to permit serial communications with Visual BASIC programs. The advantage of this method is that it will work with any 32-bit Windows operating system, including Windows XP without the need for any third-party add-ons. The main drawbacks are that this control is not included with anything less than the Visual BASIC Professional Edition, and it is something less than straightforward in use. Software topics usually produce a certain amount of feedback from readers, and the pieces on MSCOMM are certainly no exceptions. A few readers pointed out that this control is included with Microsoft Word and Excel as part of VBA (Visual BASIC for Applications). On checking two PCs that had Microsoft Office installed but had never been loaded with Visual BASIC Professional, one had MSCOMM and the other did not. VBA is not only included with Microsoft applications, it is also provided with some software from Corel, Autodesk, etc. However, VBA is not always installed when the "Typical" option is chosen during installation. It is sometimes necessary to return to the installation disk in order to add VBA.